gotta 0.4.0

Session-rooted CLI for evidence retrieval, durable investigation state, and linked peer workflows

Gotta

gotta is a session-rooted CLI for evidence retrieval, durable investigation state, and linked peer workflows.

The public surface stays small:

gotta <plugin> ...

gotta ... is the canonical operator path. It binds or discovers the right session for the current context, hydrates the runtime environment, and dispatches the requested plugin with that session active. You do not need to cd into the session root first.

Why It Is Shaped This Way

gotta is deliberately native-first:

• prefer provider-native retrieval and mutation surfaces over ad hoc shell workarounds
• keep durable truth in session state, not in terminal scrollback
• make every material read reopenable through native locators

The normal investigation loop expands and compresses repeatedly:

1. retrieve one or two strong anchors through provider-native search or read
2. expand outward into adjacent evidence
3. compress that evidence web through session manifest, timeline, graph, leads, and analyze
4. record friction and broken affordances in oops
5. refine the next retrieval wave from durable state instead of memory

OOPS.md is not incidental note-taking. state/oops.jsonl is the canonical friction log, projected into OOPS.md, and is meant to capture operator-visible seams: misleading contracts, broken continuations, coverage gaps, and workflow friction worth fixing.

Installation

If you do not already have uv, install it first from Astral's official installation guide.

Install with uv:

uv tool install gotta

That installs the gotta entrypoint.

If you want to try the CLI without installing it permanently:

uvx --from gotta gotta --help

gotta currently supports Python >=3.10.

If you are developing on the repo, sync a local uv-managed environment:

uv sync --python 3.10 --extra dev

Installed entrypoints:

gotta ...

Development And Quality Gate

The core local gate is:

uv run pytest -q
uv run ruff check src tests
uv run python -m py_compile $(find src tests -name '*.py' -print)
uv run python -m vulture src tests --min-confidence 80

Structural pressure tools are part of the maintenance discipline:

uv run python -m radon cc src tests -s
uv run lizard src tests
uv build --python 3.10 --clear
uvx twine check dist/*

pytest, ruff, py_compile, and vulture are the correctness and hygiene gate. radon and lizard are not bug finders; they expose responsibility concentration and complexity hotspots so cleanup removes residue instead of burying it.

Configuration And Durable State

Durable provider config lives in GOTTA_CONFIG_FILE or, by default, under gotta's OS-native config directory:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/gotta/gotta.toml
• Linux: ~/.config/gotta/gotta.toml
• Windows: %AppData%\\gotta\\gotta.toml

Example:

[providers.atlassian.env]
GOTTA_ATLASSIAN_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID = "your-client-id"
GOTTA_ATLASSIAN_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET = "your-client-secret"
GOTTA_ATLASSIAN_OAUTH_REDIRECT_URI = "http://localhost:8080/callback"
GOTTA_ATLASSIAN_TOOLSETS = "all"
GOTTA_JIRA_BASE_URL = "https://example.atlassian.net"
GOTTA_CONFLUENCE_BASE_URL = "https://example.atlassian.net/wiki"

[providers.google.env]
GOTTA_GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID = "your-client-id"
GOTTA_GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET = "your-client-secret"
GOTTA_GOOGLE_OAUTH_REDIRECT_URI = "http://localhost:8091/callback"

[providers.slack.env]
GOTTA_SLACK_WORKSPACE = "your-workspace"

Durable OAuth state lands under gotta's OS-native state directory:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/gotta/auth/
• Linux: ~/.local/state/gotta/auth/
• Windows: %LocalAppData%\\gotta\\auth\\

Canonical Session Model

The canonical top-level root is a session root under gotta's OS-native data directory:

<gotta data dir>/sessions/<session-id>/

Examples:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/gotta/sessions/<session-id>/
• Linux: ~/.local/share/gotta/sessions/<session-id>/

Session roots are context-derived, not mission-name-derived.

Each session root owns:

$WS/
  state/
    env
  bin/
  content/
  graph.mmd
  graph.json
  semantic-graph.mmd
  semantic-graph.json
  summary.json

Stored artifacts have two native reopen handles:

• artifact:<preferred-name>@<digest12>
• content:<sha256>

Both resolve through gotta read ..., so emitted evidence does not require manual manifest spelunking just to continue.

The content store is first-class:

• the filesystem under $WS/content is the durable evidence graph
• manifest.jsonl is the append-only invocation index
• identical bytes land in the same content object
• repeated fetches create additional timestamped evidence links

Retrieval And Materialization

Provider-first usage without work is first-class:

gotta jira status
gotta jira search "retry budget"
gotta github search "service ownership"
gotta github https://github.com/org/repo/commits/HEAD
gotta confluence search "queue architecture"
gotta gdocs search "incident response"
gotta slack workspaces
gotta slack auth
gotta slack search "handoff failure"
gotta read https://github.com/org/repo/blob/main/README.md

Those commands bind or create a session automatically and materialize durable evidence under that session.

gotta read is the canonical retrieval entrypoint. It supports:

• local files and directories
• bounded local rereads through --head, --tail, and --section
• provider URLs routed to the correct plugin
• canonical provider locators emitted by session surfaces
• stored content rereads by artifact or digest

Session Synthesis Surfaces

gotta session is how the raw evidence web becomes navigable:

• session manifest
• session timeline
• session graph
• session leads
• session analyze

Examples:

gotta session show
gotta session manifest --plugin jira
gotta session timeline --limit 20
gotta session graph --output mermaid
gotta session leads artifact:ticket.md@0123deadbeef
gotta session analyze

These surfaces intentionally compress the evidence web:

• manifest summarizes what has been materialized
• timeline reconstructs chronology
• graph renders lineage and continuity
• leads extracts explicit next reads from existing artifacts
• analyze rebuilds cached session synthesis outputs from durable state

Before the first strong anchor, empty manifest, graph, leads, and analyze output is normal.

Session Coordination

Scaffold the active session in place, then rewrite the operator-owned charter surfaces explicitly:

gotta session init
gotta want --stdin <<'EOF'
Queue retry investigation.
EOF
gotta goal --stdin <<'EOF'
Build the execution charter for the current session from live context.
EOF

That scaffolds the canonical session files plus readable projections:

$WS/
  WANT.md
  TODO.md
  LOGS.md
  GOAL.md
  OOPS.md
  peers/
  bin/

Inside the session surface:

• WANT.md and GOAL.md are intentional rewrites
• state/todo.jsonl is canonical and projects into TODO.md
• state/logs.jsonl is canonical and projects into LOGS.md
• state/oops.jsonl is canonical and projects into OOPS.md
• peer lifecycle state, peer notes state, and the session evidence web carry shared coordination

This split is deliberate:

• narrative framing stays editable
• operational truth stays append-only and durable
• readable projections refresh from canonical state

Examples:

gotta session init
gotta want --stdin <<'EOF'
Queue retry investigation.
EOF
gotta goal --stdin <<'EOF'
Investigate retry handling from the first strong source anchor and keep the
charter current as evidence lands.
EOF
gotta todo append <<'EOF'
Inspect duplicate materializations in `gotta session analyze`.
EOF
gotta logs append <<'EOF'
Captured the first GitHub, Jira, and Confluence anchor set.
EOF
gotta oops append <<'EOF'
Search results were followable, but one direct fetch still had a continuity gap.
EOF

Flat Linked Peer Sessions

Peers are linked sessions, not hierarchical sub-objects.

• peers/<actor>/ is a symlink to that linked peer session root
• state/peers/<actor>/ is a symlink to that peer session's state/
• peer-local planning and lifecycle state stay peer-local
• shared coordination surfaces stay shared by explicit links

Examples:

gotta peer with Claude
gotta want --session peers/claude --stdin <<'EOF'
Trace retry ownership from the first strong source anchor.
EOF
gotta goal --session peers/claude --stdin <<'EOF'
Materialize the peer-local evidence contract before launch.
EOF
gotta peer launch Claude
gotta notes show claude
gotta todo extend --session peers/claude <<'EOF'
- Compare retry behavior across the earliest design docs.
EOF

Important invariants:

• gotta peer with ... configures linked peer sessions but does not launch them
• peer-local WANT.md and GOAL.md are seeded placeholders that must be rewritten before launch with gotta want --session peers/<peer> ... and gotta goal --session peers/<peer> ...
• peer-local TODO.md is seeded automatically and can be extended
• peer notes are supervisory visibility, not a separate truth store
• peer evidence often lands in the shared manifest, timeline, and graph before notes fully catch up

oops As Canonical Alignment

gotta oops is a first-class operator surface, not an afterthought.

Use it to record:

• broken or misleading contracts
• native surfaces that should have been followable but were not
• provider coverage limits that materially shaped the investigation
• workflow friction that forced unnatural detours

The point is not merely bug tracking. The point is preserving operator-visible misalignment in canonical shared state so the tool can be refined from observed breakage rather than taste or memory.

Plugin Architecture

gotta uses two entry-point groups:

• gotta.plugins for top-level plugins
• gotta.ask for optional ask-family extensions

Core is a PEP 420 namespace package. Plugins can live in separate distributions and still contribute modules under the shared gotta namespace.

Core currently ships these top-level plugins:

• ask
• confluence
• gdocs
• gdrive
• github
• gsheets
• jira
• logs
• notes
• oops
• peer
• read
• session
• slack
• todo
• want
• goal

read is the URL-shaped dispatcher. It routes recognized targets through installed provider plugins by asking those plugins whether they own the target.

Ask Extensions

gotta ask is a generic host for separately installed ask-family extensions. Core does not ship any built-in ask surfaces.

An ask extension registers the gotta.ask entry-point group and then becomes available as:

gotta ask <surface> ...

Use gotta ask --help-all to inspect installed ask surfaces recursively.

Contributing And Release Discipline

The project is maintained with a few deliberate rules:

• remove residue instead of layering over it
• prefer tool-observable truth to conversational assumption
• keep friction canonical in oops
• treat complexity as measurable pressure, not just aesthetic discomfort

If you contribute:

• run the full quality gate before proposing changes
• keep examples and fixtures generic and public
• preserve the native evidence-first workflow
• prefer behavior-level cleanup over compatibility ballast

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the repository baseline.

Release

Build and validate artifacts with uv:

uv build --python 3.10 --clear
uvx twine check dist/*
uv publish --dry-run
uv publish

uv publish needs PyPI credentials in the environment. The simplest local path is UV_PUBLISH_TOKEN.