Captain Barbossa

Captain Barbossa launches a native agent CLI (Claude Code or Codex) as a captain inside a Herdr workspace. The captain recruits further native agents as crew in new Herdr panes or tabs, so a team of native agent sessions can work on the same checkout at once. There is no daemon, custom UI, or tmux layer: everything runs through Herdr, plus a small graph memory stored outside the repo.

Requirements

• macOS or Linux, Python 3.11+
• uv
• Herdr, as your terminal workspace
• Claude Code and/or Codex, installed and already signed in

Install

uv tool install captain-barbossa

If your shell cannot find captain afterward, run uv tool update-shell and restart the terminal.

Upgrade

uv tool upgrade captain-barbossa

Running captains keep the old code until restarted with captain --session <session-id>.

Starting a captain

Launch captain from an interactive terminal inside a Herdr workspace:

captain                         # asks: Claude Code or Codex?
captain --agent claude          # Claude Code in this pane
captain --agent codex           # Codex in this pane
captain --prompt "Inspect this project"

It renames the current tab to Captain Barbossa and replaces itself with the chosen native CLI, so native input, history, permissions, and login all stay with that agent.

Recruiting crew

Ask the captain to spin up a crew in plain language; its startup instructions carry a recruiting ruleset. When you state no preference it recruits with no questions, using:

• agent: the CLI the captain itself runs as
• placement: a pane split picked from the tab layout (auto), or a new tab when crowded
• model: a tier picked from the task (see below)

Every choice you do state is used as given; the captain asks at most one question, and only when you hand a choice back to it ("ask me where to put it") or name one too vaguely to map to a flag. Only the captain recruits; crew forward any delegation request back to the captain instead of spawning their own.

You can also run the command directly from a shell attached to the captain's session:

captain crew --task "Review the current changes"
captain crew gibbs --task "Review the current changes"   # request a specific name

Names. Every crew gets a one-word Pirates of the Caribbean name: Jack, Will, Elizabeth, Gibbs, Anamaria, Pintel, Ragetti, Cotton, Marty, Tia, Davy, or Sao, assigned in that order and skipping names already in use. Dismissing crew frees the name for reuse, so the next recruit takes the lowest free roster name again. Once every name is taken, numbering starts at Jack-2. Barbossa is reserved for the captain. The same name is used everywhere: the crew ID, the pane/tab label, and the name in memory, wait, focus, model, and dismiss.

Placement. --placement pane|tab, and for a pane, --direction vertical|horizontal|auto with --split-pane <pane-id>|auto. auto searches existing crew tabs (current tab first) for the split that leaves both halves largest and squarest on screen, at least 60 columns by 15 rows. Ties favor panes without crew, then panes nearest the captain; splitting the captain's own pane ranks last. When nothing fits, the crew opens in a new tab instead. The chosen pane, direction, and a one-line reason are printed and recorded in memory.

Model tiers. --model takes a provider-neutral tier or free text:

The captain picks a tier from the task: cheap for mechanical edits, renames, formatting, and docs; mid for normal features, tests, and work inside one area; strong for design, debugging, multi-file changes, or long-context reads. Free text also works and is matched to the closest model the chosen CLI offers (exact IDs and aliases first, then prefixes, substrings, and close spellings): Claude Code additionally offers claude-fable-5-1 (fable); Codex additionally offers gpt-5.4-mini (mini), gpt-5.6-luna (luna), gpt-5.6-sol (sol), and gpt-5.5. Ambiguous or unknown text reports the options and creates nothing. Without --model, the CLI's own default applies.

New crew panes/tabs open in the same workspace and project without stealing focus, and the task is submitted once the native agent is ready. A task that never starts, or an agent waiting for approval, preserves the pane for inspection and reports an error naming the herdr agent prompt command to send the task by hand; nothing is retried automatically beyond one resend.

Crew share the checkout; see Editing guardrails below.

Waiting for crew to finish

captain wait Jack
captain wait Jack --timeout 300

Blocks until the crew is done, idle, or blocked. It follows the native CLI's own lifecycle events rather than reading its pane, so a pause between tools is not mistaken for the end.

The final status and the crew's own report are printed and recorded in memory, falling back to the crew's last message or the tail of its pane when it reported nothing. A crew still working when the timeout (900s by default) expires records nothing and reports an error; wait again, or read its pane directly with herdr agent read <name>.

Sending a follow-up

captain tell Jack "also update the changelog"

Prompts an existing crew in place; its pane, model, and running conversation are kept. The message replaces the crew's recorded assignment and is saved to memory, and any idle event left over from before the prompt is consumed first, so the next captain wait Jack reports the new work rather than the old pause. Dismissed crew are refused; recruit new crew instead.

Checking crew status

captain status
captain status --all

Prints a plain-text table of this session's crew: name, provider, model, pane, status, and the first line of their assigned task, truncated to about 60 characters. Status is refreshed live from Herdr for each crew, falling back to the last recorded status if Herdr can't be reached. Dismissed crew are omitted unless --all is given; captain status with no crew prints "No crew."

Focusing crew

Tell the captain "focus on Jack", "switch to Will", or "take me to Elizabeth", or run the command directly:

captain focus Jack

Names are case-insensitive; crew IDs and Herdr agent names also work. Focusing switches to the crew's tab first when it differs from the captain's, follows the registered agent if its pane has moved, and never sends input or interrupts its work. An unknown or ambiguous name reports the available choices.

Switching a running crew's model

Ask the captain to step a crew up or down a tier when its model stops fitting the work, or run the command directly:

captain model Jack strong
captain model Will cheap

This drives the CLI's own /model command through Herdr and verifies the result: without the CLI's own confirmation line naming that model, the command reports an error and changes nothing. Codex keeps the reasoning level it already had. A confirmed switch updates the session and memory; the pane, the conversation, and the assignment are untouched. Claude Code's inline /model also saves the model as the default for new sessions, and the command prints that as a reminder.

Dismissing crew

captain dismiss Jack

Closes the crew's pane, retires the name (freeing it for reuse), and records the dismissal in memory. This is permanent, so confirm any unreported or uncommitted work is handled first: crew commit their own hunks, and the captain only cleans up the user's leftover edits afterward.

Editing guardrails

Crew share one checkout, so both captain and crew instructions carry the same contract:

• Edit only files in your own assignment; give simultaneous writers disjoint files and serialize same-file work.
• Re-read a file right before editing it, and keep others' unexpected changes in place.
• Stage and commit only your own files/hunks, never git add -A or repo-wide formatting.
• Never overwrite, rewrite from scratch, or discard existing or uncommitted work; edit in place, and ask the user first if an assignment implies replacing content.
• Finish or record a handoff before anyone else edits your file.
• Never commit or bump the version unless the user explicitly asks; otherwise leave the work in the working tree and report the diff.

Nothing locks files: this is an instruction-only contract, not enforcement.

Memory

Captain stores graph relationships and launch metadata outside the repository, split so durable project facts survive OS temp cleanup while ephemeral session state does not:

~/.local/state/captain-barbossa/<hash of project path>/
  graph.json                      # explicit --scope project facts

<OS temp>/captain-barbossa-<uid>/<hash of project path>/
  sessions/<session-id>/
    session.json                  # workspace and crew references
    graph.json                    # this session's memory only
    events/<crew>.jsonl           # native hook events, plus cursor files

$XDG_STATE_HOME is honored in place of ~/.local/state when set. Git repositories use their checkout root as project identity; other directories use the launch directory. Crew inherit their captain's project and session; only explicitly saved project facts carry into other sessions. Set CAPTAIN_MEMORY_ROOT before starting captain to redirect both roots at once (used for test isolation and custom retention); it must point outside the project.

captain memory add "rate limiter" "uses" "per-user windows"
captain memory add "test command" "is" "python -m unittest" --scope project
captain memory show
captain memory query "rate limiter"
captain memory path

memory show prints the most recent relationships as [scope] [subject, relation, object]; --all shows every link, --json dumps the raw graph. Default scope is session; use --scope project only for facts that should survive into future sessions.

Graphify is optional: install it with uv tool install graphifyy to enable memory query, which runs against an isolated snapshot of project and session memory that is removed afterward. Relationships can still be added and read with memory add/show without it.

Session directories accumulate as sessions end. captain memory prune (also run automatically, silently, and best-effort at every launch) removes directories where nothing has been touched for --older-than days (7 by default) and Herdr reports no live agent in their panes; when Herdr is unreachable, only directories twice that age are removed. The current session and the durable project graph are never removed.

captain memory prune
captain memory prune --older-than 30

Running commands from another pane

These commands run inside the launched agent's environment. From a separate Herdr shell in the same project/workspace, pass the session explicitly:

captain --session <session-id> memory show
captain --session <session-id> crew --task "Check boundary cases"
captain --session <session-id> --agent codex

--session reuses the captain's graph memory; it starts a fresh native conversation, not a provider transcript resume.

Troubleshooting

• captain: command not found - run uv tool update-shell and restart the terminal.
• Installed from Git before the PyPI release - switch the install over once with uv tool install --force captain-barbossa; uv tool upgrade then picks up each published release.
• "Launch captain from an interactive Herdr terminal." - captain with no subcommand needs a TTY; run it directly in a Herdr pane, not through a script or pipe.
• Crew pane opens but the task never starts, or is marked needs_attention - the native CLI may be waiting for approval or sign-in. Inspect the pane in Herdr; the task is not retried automatically past one resend. Send it by hand with herdr agent prompt <agent-name> '<task>'.
• "... is waiting for input or approval instead of starting the task." - read the pane before approving, then send the requested key with herdr agent send-keys <name> <key> (Claude Code may need Enter or a number, not always y).
• "... did not confirm the switch to ..." - the native CLI didn't echo the expected model name; read the pane with herdr agent read <name> before retrying captain model.
• "This session belongs to another project or Herdr workspace." - a session ID is tied to the project and workspace it was created in; start a new captain or pass the matching --session.
• "durable memory root ... is inside the OS temp directory" - a captain started before the state/temp split is still exporting one root to its children; restart it so project-scope memory survives temp cleanup.
• memory query fails or reports a skip - Graphify isn't installed; run uv tool install graphifyy, or use memory show/add instead.
• Ambiguous crew name or model - the error lists the available crew or models; ask for one of those exactly.

Command reference

All NAME arguments are case-insensitive and accept the crew's display name, ID, or Herdr agent name.

Development

See CONTRIBUTING.md for setting up a checkout, running checks, and the commit/PR workflow. Current implementation scope is tracked in docs/plan.md.

Related CLIs: Herdr, Graphify, and Codex's additional instructions.

License

Licensed under MIT.