baton-pass 0.1.3

One living onboarding doc. Every agent. Every teammate. Always in sync.

Baton

5 agent adapters · zero-cost session capture · 364 tests passing

Stop re-explaining your project to every AI. One file, every agent, always in sync.

Baton keeps structured project memory — your decisions, constraints, session history, and architectural context — alive across tool switches and session ends. Every agent you work with reads the same living document, so it never needs to ask what you already decided.

This is not about translating one file into five config formats. The sync is the transport. The value is that an agent picking up your project tomorrow knows what was ruled out last week, what is intentionally weird, and exactly where you left off — without you re-explaining any of it.

BATON.md  ←── the only file you edit (plain Markdown + YAML)
    │
    └── baton sync delivers it to every agent:
        ├── CLAUDE.md                          (Claude Code)
        ├── AGENTS.md                          (OpenAI Codex)
        ├── .cursor/rules/baton.mdc            (Cursor)
        ├── GEMINI.md                          (Gemini CLI)
        └── .github/copilot-instructions.md   (GitHub Copilot)

The generated files are not source files — gitignore them. They are recreated on demand from BATON.md.

---

The problem

You switch from Claude Code to Cursor. Cursor has no idea what you decided yesterday. You switch back. Claude Code has no idea what Cursor just changed. You spend the first 10 minutes of every session rebuilding context that you already captured somewhere.

But the real problem isn't tool-switching. It's memory loss:

• The agent re-suggests what you already rejected. You ruled out TypeScript last week. The agent doesn't know — it suggests it again. You explain again.
• The agent fixes things that are intentionally weird. That auth callback looks like a bug. It isn't — it's the OAuth PKCE flow. The agent "fixes" it. You revert it.
• Decisions vanish when sessions end. You chose SQLite for local dev, Postgres in prod, for a specific reason. Three sessions later a new agent switches both to Postgres. The reasoning was never written down.

Baton fixes this by making you the curator of a single document that every agent reads. Your job shifts from re-explaining to maintaining — which is a much smaller, higher-leverage activity.

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Install

pip install baton-pass

Python 3.10+ required.

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Quickstart

# 1. In your project root
baton init

# 2. Fill in BATON.md — takes 5–10 minutes the first time
#    Add your project purpose, stack decisions, hard constraints, architectural choices

# 3. Push to all agent config files
baton sync

# 4. At the end of a session, capture what changed — no API key required
baton end

That's it. No API key for baton end — the default summarizer is free and runs entirely from your git history.

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Commands

Command	What it does
baton init	Scaffold BATON.md, .baton.toml, and a pre-commit reminder hook
baton sync	Push BATON.md → all enabled agent config files
baton status	Show which files are in-sync, drifted, or missing
baton score	Grade your BATON.md memory quality out of 100 — are decisions documented? laws set? landmines marked?
baton end	Capture the session into BATON.md — free by default, LLM optional
baton doctor	Diagnose your setup: BATON.md validity, adapters, agent files, API keys

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How it works

baton sync — deterministic, no LLM

Generates CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, GEMINI.md, .cursor/rules/baton.mdc, and .github/copilot-instructions.md from BATON.md. These are output files — commit only BATON.md and gitignore the rest:

CLAUDE.md
AGENTS.md
GEMINI.md
.cursor/rules/baton.mdc
.github/copilot-instructions.md

Baton never overwrites your existing agent files. It only updates a managed region between HTML comment markers, leaving all hand-written content untouched:

<!-- BATON:START — auto-generated, do not edit by hand -->
... rendered context from BATON.md ...
<!-- BATON:END -->

baton status detects drift without any LLM call.

baton end — session capture with no API key required

At the end of a coding session, baton end reads your git diff since the last session and writes an update to BATON.md. It works across three tiers, from cheapest to most complete:

Mode	Cost	How
baton end (default)	Free	Heuristic: derives the summary from diff stats and commit subjects — no model, no key
baton end --apply	Free	Reads a pre-drafted delta JSON from stdin — designed for host-agent skills (see below)
baton end --api	API quota	Calls your configured LLM for a richer, model-authored summary

The worst case is always "captured at reduced fidelity, easy to upgrade later" — never "session lost because a key wasn't set."

# Default: free, zero-cost, no setup
baton end

# Review each section before writing, or skip prompts entirely
baton end --yes

# Use an LLM if you want a richer summary (optional)
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
baton end --api

# Diff from a specific commit / record the tool you used
baton end --since main --tool cursor

For host-agent skills (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor)

--diff-only prints the git diff and exact JSON contract. The host agent drafts the JSON from its own session context and pipes it to --apply — no separate API call, uses the agent's existing quota:

# Agent workflow
baton end --diff-only   # → prints context + JSON spec
# ... agent drafts the delta JSON ...
echo '<delta json>' | baton end --apply

If the agent produces nothing usable, --apply falls back to the heuristic automatically.

baton doctor — setup diagnostics

baton doctor -- diagnosing your setup

── BATON.md ──────────────────────────────────
  PASS  BATON.md found
  PASS  Valid YAML block parsed

── Config (.baton.toml) ──────────────────────
  PASS  .baton.toml found
  llm_provider = anthropic
  min_diff_lines = 10

── Adapters ──────────────────────────────────
  PASS  3 adapter(s) enabled (auto-detected from repo root)

── Agent files (dry-run sync) ────────────────
  PASS  claude     CLAUDE.md               in-sync
  WARN  cursor     .cursor/rules/baton.mdc  drifted
        Fix: baton sync

── API keys ──────────────────────────────────
  WARN  ANTHROPIC_API_KEY    not set  (only needed for baton end --api)
  WARN  OPENAI_API_KEY       not set
  WARN  GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS  not set

baton doctor always exits 0 — it tells you what to fix without blocking your workflow.

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What lives in BATON.md

BATON.md is a Markdown file with a single YAML block. The schema is designed around the sections agents most often get wrong without them:

Section	What it prevents
laws	Agents violating hard constraints you've already set
decisions	Agents re-litigating choices that are already made
anti_decisions	Agents re-suggesting approaches you explicitly rejected
landmines	Agents "fixing" code that is intentionally weird
open_questions	Agents making unilateral calls on things you haven't decided yet
stack	Agents picking wrong library versions or missing known gotchas
current_sprint	Agents working on the wrong thing or duplicating done work
sessions	Agents starting blind — the running log of what actually happened

baton score grades how well these sections are filled in, out of 100.

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LLM providers (optional, for baton end --api)

Provider	Install	Auth
Anthropic (Claude) — default	(included)	ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
OpenAI (GPT-4o, o1, etc.)	pip install "baton-pass[openai]"	OPENAI_API_KEY
Google Vertex AI (Gemini)	pip install "baton-pass[vertex]"	GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS + BATON_VERTEX_PROJECT

# .baton.toml
[baton]
llm_provider = "openai"   # anthropic | openai | vertex
# model = "gpt-4o"        # leave empty to use each provider's default

A provider is only needed if you run baton end --api. The default heuristic mode has no dependency.

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Supported AI coding tools

Tool	Config file synced	Auto-detected
Claude Code	CLAUDE.md	Yes
Cursor	.cursor/rules/baton.mdc	Yes (.cursor/ dir)
GitHub Copilot	.github/copilot-instructions.md	Yes
OpenAI Codex	AGENTS.md	Yes
Gemini CLI	GEMINI.md	Yes

Don't see your tool? Adding an adapter is ~50 lines. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

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Configuration

# .baton.toml

[baton]
llm_provider = "anthropic"   # anthropic | openai | vertex  (only for --api)
# model = ""                 # empty = provider default
min_diff_lines = 10          # skip baton end if the diff is smaller than this
auto_sync = true             # re-sync agent files automatically after baton end

[adapters]
enabled = ["claude", "cursor", "copilot"]  # or omit to auto-detect

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Why open source

Your project memory belongs in your repo. BATON.md is a plain Markdown file you own, commit, and version-control. Context management for AI coding tools shouldn't be locked in a SaaS. Baton is MIT-licensed.

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Roadmap

baton init / sync / status / score / doctor	Done
baton end — heuristic (free default) + stdin apply + LLM opt-in	Done
Host-agent skills (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor)	In progress
Commit B: marker-driven decision / landmine capture (DECISION: / LANDMINE: inline)	Planned
Team sync — shared BATON.md, PR-time updates	Planned
GitHub Actions integration	Planned
MCP server — expose BATON.md to any MCP-compatible agent	Planned

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Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Good first contributions:

• New agent adapter — ~50 lines, well-documented pattern
• New LLM provider — ~30 lines, follows the existing base class
• Bug reports and feedback — open an issue

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.

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Changelog

0.1.3 — 2026-06-19

New

• baton end no longer requires an API key. The default mode is now a zero-cost heuristic summarizer derived from diff stats and commit subjects — no model, no setup.
• baton end --apply reads a pre-drafted delta JSON from stdin, designed for host-agent skills. Falls back to the heuristic automatically on empty or malformed input.
• baton end --api preserves the existing LLM provider path as an opt-in upgrade.
• baton end --diff-only prints the git diff and JSON contract for a host agent to use; no writes.
• New baton/core/heuristic.py — deterministic delta-source with get_commit_log helper.

Tests

• 50 new tests: test_heuristic.py (31), test_gitdiff.py additions (7), test_end.py additions (18 — covers all four modes, stdin fallback paths, backward-compat of summarizer= kwarg) — 364 tests total

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0.1.2 — 2026-06-13

New

• baton doctor — diagnoses your entire Baton setup: valid BATON.md, active config, detected adapters, per-file sync status, all three provider API keys. Prints PASS / WARN / FAIL with inline fix commands. Always exits 0.

Tests

• 130 new tests across test_cli.py, test_summarizer.py, test_extended.py — 314 tests total

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0.1.1 — 2026-06-05

Bug fixes

• baton end no longer crashes with a raw traceback on wrong/expired/rate-limited API keys — all three providers now surface a clean error message
• Fixed a parse error where a code example before the JSON block in the LLM response caused the fence-stripping regex to extract the wrong block

Improvements

• 184 tests total

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0.1.0 — 2026-06-04

Initial release: baton init, baton sync, baton status, baton score, baton end.

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Related

ai coding assistant · claude code · cursor ide · github copilot · gemini cli · codex · ai context management · vibe coding · ai pair programming · multi-agent workflow · llm context · ai developer tools · coding agent · ai session management · structured project memory · llm-agnostic · anthropic · openai · google gemini