agentfront

Agent First Interface — an importable runtime for tools whose primary consumer is an AI agent, not a human.

Formerly teken (and afi-cli before that). The project was renamed to agentfront — the agent-facing front a tool presents. The teken package and the teken command still work as deprecated aliases — see Install.

You import agentfront, build one App, and declare your docs and tools once. From that single registry, agentfront derives three interface surfaces, each shaped by a different agent-ergonomic principle:

• CLI — with a learn affordance so an agent can introspect the tool and author its own usage skill (not just read --help).
• MCP server — a deliberately minimal menu, tuned for low surface area over maximal API coverage.
• HTTP site — markdown pages plus a sitemap, navigable by any agent with a fetch tool.

Because all three surfaces read from the same registry, they cannot drift apart. agentfront is a library you embed in your tool, not a code generator that scaffolds files. (Earlier alpha releases shipped a cli cite scaffolder and a manifest→three-surfaces generator; that approach has been retired in favour of the importable runtime.)

Part of the AgentCulture OSS org — see docs/agentculture.md for the org, its paradigm, and how agentfront is foundational to it. The design brief is in docs/agent-first.md; the concrete rubric that agentfront cli doctor enforces is in docs/rubric.md.

Install

uv tool install agentfront

Then agentfront --version should work on your PATH. uv tool install is the supported path — not pip install.

The CLI and HTTP surfaces are pure standard library and have no third-party dependency. The MCP surface is the one surface that needs the official mcp SDK, so it ships behind an optional extra — install it only when you want app.mcp_server():

uv tool install 'agentfront[mcp]'   # CLI + HTTP + MCP

Calling app.mcp_server() without the extra installed raises a ModuleNotFoundError that names the extra to add.

uv tool install teken   # still works: a thin wrapper that installs agentfront

The teken command is retained as a deprecated alias for agentfront (it prints a one-line notice to stderr and forwards). New usage should prefer agentfront.

Usage

agentfront is a library. In your tool, build an App, register docs and tools, then ask for whichever surface(s) you want to serve:

from agentfront import App

app = App(name="mytool", version="1.0")
app.add_docs_dir("docs/")            # every *.md becomes a page on the HTTP site

@app.tool
def search(query: str) -> str:
    """Search the corpus."""        # docstring + signature feed the MCP tool schema
    ...

http_app = app.http_app()            # WSGI app: markdown pages + /sitemap.xml
mcp = app.mcp_server()               # MCP server exposing the registered tools
cli = app.cli()                      # argparse CLI with learn / doctor verbs

Docs and tools are declared once into a single registry; the three surfaces only read from it, so a tool you add is automatically present on every surface and they cannot disagree.

Audit a CLI against the rubric

agentfront also ships a CLI of its own (uv tool install agentfront) that introspects itself and audits other agent-first CLIs. Every command supports --json where it produces a listing or report, and respects the exit-code policy (0 success / 1 user error / 2 env error).

agentfront learn                       # structured self-teaching prompt for an agent
agentfront learn --json                # same, as a JSON payload
agentfront explain cli doctor          # markdown docs for any noun/verb path
agentfront explain agentfront          # top-level map

agentfront cli doctor [path]           # audit a CLI at <path> against the seven-bundle rubric
agentfront cli doctor . --json         # full structured report
agentfront cli doctor . --strict       # treat warnings as failures
agentfront cli overview [path]         # read-only descriptive snapshot of a CLI

agentfront cli doctor is a hybrid auditor: static checks for repo structure (pyproject.toml, tests/) and black-box subprocess probes for behavior (learn, --json, error discipline, explain). Every failure includes a concrete remediation pointer. (agentfront cli verify remains as a deprecated alias for cli doctor.)

Testing your front

Every surface agentfront derives from your App is built from the same registry, so they cannot disagree — and that claim isn't just asserted, it's checked by a function you can call from your own test suite:

from agentfront.testing import assert_surfaces_agree

def test_surfaces_agree():
    assert_surfaces_agree(app)   # raises AssertionError naming the drift

agentfront.testing also ships run_cli (in-process CLI invocation), call_mcp (the MCP run payload without a server), and TAUI helpers (drive, assert_agent_human_parity, snapshot/resume) for testing the agent- and human-driven cockpit. See docs/testing.md for the full guide, with runnable examples for each.

Develop

uv sync                          # install + dev deps
uv run pytest -n auto -v         # tests (includes the self-doctor acceptance gate)
uv run agentfront cli doctor .   # same gate, interactive
uv run pre-commit install        # enable lint hooks

The tests/test_self_doctor.py acceptance gate runs the rubric and self-doctor in-process against the repo root; any regression that breaks a bundle blocks the commit.

See CLAUDE.md for design intent and full command reference.

License

Apache License 2.0. © 2026 Ori Nachum / AgentCulture. See LICENSE.