kagura-brain 0.5.1

Brain layer for Kagura harnesses — headless CLI coding-agent launcher (claude -p today), subscription-auth hygiene, verdict, doctor primitives

kagura-brain

The provider-neutral "brain" layer shared by Kagura's CLI-brain harnesses (kagura-engineer, kagura-planner, kagura-code-reviewer).

These tools run a headless CLI coding agent as their brain. They were each re-implementing the same seams: launching the agent, stripping stale provider credentials so subscription auth wins, parsing exit codes and sentinel markers, and normalizing output. This package centralizes those seams.

Two adapters ship today — Claude Code (claude -p) and Codex CLI (codex exec) — as thin siblings over one shared launcher core (core._run + verdict + extract_block). Each strips its provider's credential/endpoint overrides from the child env so the CLI's subscription login wins: claude deny-sets ANTHROPIC_*; codex prefix-scrubs OPENAI_*/CODEX_* (including OPENAI_BASE_URL and CODEX_HOME).

from kagura_brain import claude, codex

claude.invoke("…prompt…", mcp_config=".mcp.json")   # claude -p
codex.invoke("…prompt…", sandbox="read-only")       # codex exec

MCP / approval differs by provider. Claude takes per-call --mcp-config / --allowedTools (see claude.mcp_args). Codex manages MCP servers persistently via codex mcp / ~/.codex/config.toml (no per-call flag), and its sandbox / approval is opt-in: pass sandbox= (read-only | workspace-write | danger-full-access) or bypass_approvals=True — neither is loosened by default.

BYO endpoint (opt-in)

By default both adapters strip the provider's endpoint/credential env so the subscription login wins. To deliberately route at a caller-chosen endpoint (Ollama Cloud / any compatible gateway), pass endpoint + api_key together — they are injected after the scrub, so only these explicit values reach the child while an ambient *_BASE_URL override stays stripped (#2):

# Codex → Ollama Cloud (OpenAI-compatible). "ollama-cloud" is an alias for
# codex.OLLAMA_CLOUD_ENDPOINT ("https://ollama.com/v1").
codex.invoke("…prompt…", endpoint="ollama-cloud", api_key="…")
# Codex → a LOCAL ollama/lmstudio backend (no endpoint/key needed):
codex.invoke("…prompt…", local_provider="ollama")
# Claude → a caller-supplied Anthropic-compatible gateway (no Ollama preset:
# Ollama Cloud is OpenAI-, not Anthropic-, compatible):
claude.invoke("…prompt…", endpoint="https://my-gateway/v1", api_key="…")

Supplying only one of endpoint/api_key raises ValueError; a non-https endpoint emits a UserWarning (prompt + code context goes off-box). With none of these set, the default subscription-auth path is byte-for-byte unchanged.

Provider-neutral selector

When a consumer supports more than one backend, select confines the claude/codex dispatch — and the per-provider MCP wiring — to the library, so each consumer no longer re-encodes it (#14):

import os

from kagura_brain import select, BRAIN_API_KEY_ENV

# "claude" (default) and "codex" are both supports_mcp=True.
handle = select(cfg.backend, endpoint=cfg.endpoint, api_key=os.environ.get(BRAIN_API_KEY_ENV))
handle.invoke("…prompt…", cwd=repo, mcp_config=".mcp.json", allowed_tools=MEMORY_TOOLS)
# Same mcp_config/allowed_tools to both; the adapter owns the mechanism:
# claude → --mcp-config/--allowedTools per call; codex → translates the .mcp.json
# into -c mcp_servers.* overrides and ignores allowed_tools (no codex analog).
# endpoint/api_key forward to both.

select takes primitives, never a consumer's Config, and never reads the env itself — the library owns only the standard name BRAIN_API_KEY_ENV ("KAGURA_BRAIN_API_KEY"); the consumer reads it and passes api_key= in. An unknown backend raises ValueError.

Why a separate package (not folded into the memory SDK)

Harness-support code splits cleanly along two axes:

Axis	Belongs in	Examples
memory	kagura-memory-python-sdk	sync client facade, .mcp.json setup, auth resolution, recall
brain	this package	CLI-agent launcher (claude -p + codex exec), subscription-auth hygiene, verdict contract, doctor primitives

Pushing CLI-agent spawning into a memory SDK would invert the layers ("memory spawns the agent"). So the brain axis lives here, and this package depends on no memory package — the two support libs are mutually independent.

kagura-engineer   kagura-planner   kagura-code-reviewer
        \                |                /
         `--> kagura-brain  +  kagura-memory-python-sdk <--'
                  (brain axis)            (memory axis)

Install

pip install kagura-brain
# or: uv add kagura-brain

Requires Python 3.11+. It has no Python runtime dependencies (stdlib-only) — and by design depends on no memory package (see the axis split above).

Prerequisites: the provider CLIs

kagura-brain is a launcher — it drives the provider CLIs as subprocesses, so each adapter needs its own CLI installed and on PATH. These are external tools, not pip dependencies; install only the one(s) you use:

Adapter	Needs	Auth (default path)
claude.invoke()	Claude Code CLI (claude) — see docs	signed in to your Claude subscription (the adapter strips ANTHROPIC_* so the subscription login wins)
codex.invoke()	Codex CLI (codex) — see docs	codex login (ChatGPT subscription; the adapter strips OPENAI_*/CODEX_*). Verified against Codex 0.133.0 (codex._CODEX_VERIFIED_VERSION)

The CLI binary is required even in BYO-endpoint mode — only the auth source changes: instead of the subscription login, the caller-supplied endpoint + api_key (or, for Codex, a local --oss --local-provider backend) are used. No subscription login is needed for the BYO path, but claude / codex must still be installed.

doctor primitives to check CLI launchability are planned (see Status).

Status

Public surface is built incrementally under TDD, one consumer migration per PR:

• core — shared seam: BrainResult, _run (subprocess + env-scrub + timeout + utf-8 decode), as_text, extract_block
• claude.invoke() — headless claude -p launcher (ANTHROPIC_*/CLAUDE_* deny-set, ---guarded prompt, mcp_args, opt-in BYO endpoint/api_key)
• codex.invoke() — headless codex exec launcher (OPENAI_*/CODEX_* prefix scrub, ---guarded prompt, opt-in sandbox, BYO endpoint/api_key + local_provider)
• verdict — PROCEED set + exit-code map (contract only); see the exit-code contract for the canonical gate vocabulary vs reviewer-internal codes
• doctor — provider-neutral check primitives (check_binary, check_auth, check_endpoint, aggregate) + presence-only claude.check()/codex.check() wrappers
• select — provider-neutral BrainHandle selector over the adapters (supports_mcp capability; per-provider MCP wiring confined to the library — claude per-call flags, codex -c mcp_servers.*; BRAIN_API_KEY_ENV name)

Development

uv sync --extra dev
uv run pytest          # tests
uv run ruff check .    # lint
uv run ruff format .   # format
uv run mypy            # type check

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full workflow and CHANGELOG.md for release history.

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE and NOTICE.