dirtywork

Frontier models do the thinking. Local models do the dirty work.

Runs one coding task against a local LM Studio model in an agentic tool-use loop, inside an isolated git worktree. Built to be driven by an orchestrating agent (Claude Code, in our case) — the expensive frontier model orchestrates and reviews, the free local model grinds. Humans watch with tail -f.

The division of labor:

File edits go through path confinement into an isolated git worktree, and nothing the worker produces merges without your review. But the worker can run bash, and a shell is a shell — read Security & trust before pointing this at a model or repo you don't trust. Parallelism comes from launching multiple processes — LM Studio serves 4 concurrent requests per model.

Developed and benchmarked on macOS/Apple Silicon; CI-tested on Linux and macOS (Windows unsupported — see below).

Documentation

• Operating guide — running a task, resuming, reviewing, the runs subcommands, benchmarking, troubleshooting.
• Machine contract — every flag, the stdout JSON schema, exit codes, transcript events.
• Security — the Docker containment model, known exposures, and --sandbox none's host-mode caveats.
• Transcript schema — the full field-by-field JSONL/run.json reference.
• Worker image — building, publishing, and deriving the sandbox's Docker image.

Security & trust

Docker is the default sandbox as of 0.4 — a breaking change from 0.2. Every tool call (read_file/write_file/append_file/edit_file/apply_edits/ insert_before/insert_after/list_dir/grep/bash) runs inside a locked-down container: --network none by default, --read-only root filesystem, --cap-drop ALL, kernel-enforced memory/CPU/ process-count/per-file-size limits, and no host path mounted in except the parent repository's read-only git object store.

Full model, known exposures and the host-mode caveats: docs/security.md.

Platform support

Other OpenAI-compatible servers (vLLM, llama.cpp) should work via --base-url/--provider. LM Studio (--provider openai) and Ollama (--provider ollama) are both exercised — recorded-fixture contract tests for each, plus an opt-in live smoke per server; the Anthropic API adapter (--provider anthropic) has recorded-fixture tests and no live tests. Parallel tool calls are unverified on Ollama.

Requirements

• macOS/Linux, Python 3.9+ (stdlib only — no venv, no pip deps)
• Docker Desktop or dockerd (default sandbox as of 0.4) — docker version must succeed. Missing/unreachable Docker is a preflight error with a hint; pass --sandbox none to skip this requirement and run unsandboxed on the host instead.
• LM Studio serving its OpenAI-compatible API at localhost:1234 with a tool-calling-capable model loaded. Verified working: qwen/qwen3-coder-next (65k context, default) and mistralai/devstral-small-2-2512 (32k context). One slot loaded with the largest context your machine holds beats several smaller ones — see Sizing the context window for the measured numbers
• --provider anthropic needs the ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable set; the default (--provider openai, LM Studio or any OpenAI-compatible server) and --provider ollama need no key.
• --provider ollama talks to http://localhost:11434/v1 and asks GET /api/ps what context length the model is actually loaded with. Run ollama run <model> first — Ollama lists pulled models, not resident ones, so an unloaded model passes preflight and then gets whatever num_ctx Ollama picks. Model ids include the tag (gemma4:latest).
• The target repo must be a git repo with at least one commit

Other servers: anything speaking the OpenAI chat-completions API with tool calling should work via --base-url. Ollama has its own --provider ollama as of 0.10 (default base URL http://localhost:11434/v1, with a real loaded-context probe) — see Platform support for what's actually exercised by the test suites. Reports welcome.

Install

Recommended — pipx (PyPI):

pipx install dirtywork

Update later with pipx upgrade dirtywork. pipx keeps dirtywork in its own venv and puts a dirtywork shim on your PATH, so it can't collide with your projects' dependencies. If you don't have pipx, see the pipx install docs (macOS: brew install pipx && pipx ensurepath).

pipx (straight from GitHub, unreleased main):

pipx install git+https://github.com/JimboSchneider/dirtywork

From source (for hacking on dirtywork itself):

git clone https://github.com/JimboSchneider/dirtywork
cd dirtywork
chmod +x bin/dirtywork
ln -sf "$PWD/bin/dirtywork" ~/.local/bin/dirtywork

The launcher is self-locating, so this works from any clone location. Note that whatever branch or working tree is checked out becomes "the tool" — prefer the pipx install for day-to-day use and run bin/dirtywork from the clone explicitly when testing unreleased changes.

Use

dirtywork run --repo ~/repos/someproject "Add a unit test for X"

• Watch a run: tail -f the transcript path printed on stderr.
• Review a run: git -C <worktree> diff, read the transcript, run the repo's tests — then commit the branch or discard it.
• Clean up a run: dirtywork runs clean <slug>.

The review→fix loop

• dirtywork resume <slug> --feedback "…" — send the same worktree back to the worker with your review notes.
• dirtywork run --branch-from @<slug> "…" — start a fresh run from what an earlier run produced.
• dirtywork runs snapshot <slug> — commit a run's worktree onto its own branch by hand, without a full resume.
• --verify "<cmd>" — make your gate the harness's gate; a failing command comes back to the worker as a fix round before the run ends.

Everything else — resuming, the runs subcommands, benchmarking, troubleshooting: docs/operating.md; every flag, the stdout JSON and exit codes: docs/machine-contract.md.

How a run works

1. Preflight — LM Studio reachable, model loaded, repo valid. Any failure exits 2 with nothing created.
2. Worktree — a fresh worktree at <repo>/.worktrees/dw-<slug> on new branch dirtywork/<slug>, branched from --branch-from (default: repo HEAD). In docker mode (the default) the worktree stays empty (only its .git file) for the whole run — the worker's tree lives on a Docker volume and reaches the worktree only via the validated export after the run ends. .worktrees/ is added to the repo's local .git/info/exclude automatically. If the repo has a CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md at its base commit, its content is injected into the worker's system prompt so it inherits your conventions.
3. The loop — the model gets eleven tools (read_file, write_file, append_file, edit_file, apply_edits, insert_before, insert_after, list_dir, grep, bash, finish) via OpenAI function-calling. append_file adds text verbatim to the end of an existing file, so a file larger than one reply is write_file for the first part and append_file for each part after it — the recovery a truncated write_file is now told to use by name, in a message that states the --max-tokens cap and a chunk size to stay under (1.0, #65). insert_before/insert_after add whole lines around a unique anchor without touching the anchor's own line — the primitive for "add a line here", which edit_file could only express as a replace. apply_edits takes a brief's whole numbered list of exact replacements to one file in a single call, applied in order, all-or-nothing: if any old does not match exactly once at its turn, nothing is written and the result names the first failure. Since 0.10 every file write is staged in a temp file and promoted atomically, so a run killed mid-write leaves the file byte-identical instead of truncated. Every successful edit_file/apply_edits/write_file/append_file/insert_* result echoes a capped unified diff of what actually changed, so a replace that silently deleted a line is visible to the worker in the same turn — except write_file on a NEW file, which has nothing to diff against and reports its byte and line count instead. Context is budgeted per model — dirtywork asks the server what window it actually loaded and reports both the value and its source, and the payload's trimmed_turns says on how many turns the oldest tool results had to be dropped to fit. Three consecutive tool failures of one kind (malformed call, malformed arguments, unknown tool, bad arguments, empty reply) or six in total abort the run, or six cut-off replies at --max-tokens (1.0, #65). The model ends a run by calling the finish(summary=...) tool (a plain reply with no tool call also ends it); an empty, think-only, or truncated reply, or a tool call written as text, is sent back with a one-line nudge instead of being treated as completion.
4. No auto-commit — changes stay uncommitted in the worktree; the transcript lands at ~/.dirtywork/runs/<slug>/transcript.jsonl (outside the worktree, so it can never pollute the diff).

Development

python3 -m pytest                    # unit suite (no LM Studio or Docker needed)
python3 -m pytest -m live -v         # live suite (requires LM Studio running;
                                      # includes a real end-to-end agent run)
python3 -m pytest -m docker -v       # docker suite (requires a running Docker
                                      # daemon; host-sentinel and lifecycle tests)
python3 -m pytest -m ollama -v       # ollama suite (requires a running Ollama
                                      # server; opt-in, same shape as -m live)

Design docs: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-08-13-localagent-design.md (architecture and contracts) and docs/superpowers/plans/2026-08-14-localagent.md (implementation plan).

The story

dirtywork's first version was designed, built, reviewed, and shipped in a single day — by the exact orchestrator/worker pattern it implements — and its first production run surfaced a real cent-level rounding bug in the invoicing app it was pointed at. That was v0.1. Since then the work has been the unglamorous kind: hardening the host mode (0.3), putting the worker in a container (0.4), and running the tool against its own security plans, task by task, with a frontier model planning and reviewing, a local model doing the typing, and every decision on the record — reviews, ledgers, a scoreboard, and a release gate that runs on real Docker. The postmortems: building localagent, the tool renamed itself, and the process record for the sandbox work in docs/superpowers/bench/.

In August 2026 the project was renamed dirtywork — same tool, a name that says what it does.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome. Ground rules:

• Runtime stays stdlib-only — that zero-dependency install is a feature, not an accident. Dev-only dependencies (pytest) are fine.
• python3 -m pytest must be green; if your change touches the model-facing path, run the live suite too (python3 -m pytest -m live -v, needs a running LM Studio).
• Tool functions never raise; the client raises LLMError only; stdout is exactly one JSON object post-preflight. These contracts have tests — keep them green.

License

MIT © 2026 Dirt Simple Solutions, LLC