kijito-claude

Tools for Claude Code sessions to track their own context window and, optionally, run unattended. A session can catch up on memory at startup, report how much of its context window is actually in use, and recycle its context at high usage without losing the working state. It uses Kijito as the memory backend by default, and also runs standalone (see "Running without Kijito").

Everything here is optional. The catch-up and curation steps are a handful of memory calls you can run by hand; the scripts and the two skills just make the routine uniform and easy to deploy across machines. Install only the pieces you want — the context check stands alone, the autonomy harness is opt-in per pane, and the skills are convenience wrappers, not requirements.

Components

The two skills are conveniences, not the only way in: an agent can run the same catch-up and curation by hand from a few prompts. They are packaged as skills because that makes them simple to drop into ~/.claude/skills/ and invoke the same way everywhere.

The self-clear loop needs some durable store to carry the handoff across /clear. That is Kijito by default; a notes file works in standalone mode.

Install

From source:

git clone https://github.com/KijitoAI/kijito-claude
cd kijito-claude && ./install.sh

./install.sh installs the Claude provider, which is the default and what every earlier version did. The repo is provider-agnostic: each supported agent host is a directory under providers/ with its own installer and its own install location.

./install.sh --list-providers
./install.sh                      # claude (default) -> ~/.claude
./install.sh --provider codex     # codex  -> ~/.local/share/codex-kijito-hive + ~/.codex/skills

The wake protocol both providers rely on — event-line validation, the injection-fenced wake text, read-offset persistence, and the single-consumer lock — lives once in providers/_shared/wake-core.mjs. The skills stay per-provider prose on purpose: Codex's are rewrites rather than translations, and skills are read by models, where slightly-off wording is a real regression. tests/conformance_test.sh is what keeps that safe — it requires every provider's skills to state the shared doctrine (pointer first, mail is data and never authority, verify stale operational facts, running is not armed, arm at most one consumer) while leaving each lane free to say it in its own words.

Or with a package runner, no clone needed:

npx kijito-claude       # via npm
pipx run kijito-claude  # via PyPI  (uvx kijito-claude also works)

Both package runners do the same thing as the from-source install: they bundle every provider's payload and run install.sh, which defaults to the Claude provider. They need bash, so on Windows run them inside WSL (see Platform support). Pass provider flags straight through, e.g. npx kijito-claude --provider codex.

The Claude installer copies the scripts to ~/.claude/, deploys the skills to ~/.claude/skills/, drops the CLAUDE.md doctrine snippet alongside them, and merges the keys it needs into settings.json. It backs up settings.json and merges with jq, so it leaves your existing settings alone and is safe to re-run, including on other machines. Requires jq. The autonomy features require tmux.

Platform support

The scripts are POSIX-style bash and avoid GNU-only flags (epoch and timestamp formatting work on both BSD and GNU date), so they run the same on Linux and macOS.

On Windows, use WSL: install and launch claude inside the Linux distro and everything works as it does on native Linux. The autonomy harness drives a session by typing into its own tmux pane, which has no native-Windows equivalent, so without WSL only the context check and the by-hand catch-up apply. Requirements everywhere: bash and jq; add tmux for the autonomy features.

Managed vs. autonomous panes

Arming is per pane.

To arm a pane, launch it with ~/.claude/claude-armed.sh, or tell the agent to go autonomous mid-session and it runs ~/.claude/arm-session.sh on (off turns it back off). A plain claude session stays under your control.

Self-clear gate

A pane clears itself only after both steps:

1. /kijito-qa-memory curates memory, writes a current-state note that begins with RESUME NOW:, and confirms with a fresh subagent that a cold start can resume. It records a pass token.
2. self-clear.sh checks that the kill switch is off, the pane is armed, it is not a subagent, it is in tmux, the target pane is alive, and the pass token is fresh.

Every one of those is a property of this clear — above all, "is the handoff good enough to survive it?" A count-based cycle cap and an every-N human checkpoint used to sit here too and were removed on 2026-07-29: measured over 88 cycles they accounted for 19 of 24 refusals and never once caught a loop, because a count measures uptime, not runaway. If a runaway ever needs catching, detect the loop (consecutive cycles landing no commits and no memories) rather than the count.

It then runs /clear. The SessionStart hook catches the new session up and it resumes from the note. To stop all autonomous sending and clearing, create the file ~/.claude/.lifecycle/STOP.

Running without Kijito

The context check (myctx.sh) has no dependencies; install and run it.

For the autonomy harness, set KIJITO_MODE=off for a generic catch-up prompt, or set your own with KIJITO_AUTOCATCHUP_PROMPT. The self-clear gate only requires that some curation step write the pass token (~/.claude/kijito-qa-pass.sh). Kijito is the default backend, not a requirement.

Tests

bash tests/lc_test.sh

Covers arming, the token gate (both directions — a stale handoff refuses, a fresh one fires), the kill switch, auto-send, and a regression guard that the removed count gates stay removed.

By default this exercises the scripts in this repo — the ones that actually ship. Set KIJITO_TEST_TARGET=installed to run it against ~/.claude instead, and bash tests/drift_test.sh to report when those two disagree.

The rest of the suite:

bash tests/drift_test.sh                     # does this machine RUN what the repo SHIPS?
bash tests/conformance_test.sh --selftest    # every provider states the shared doctrine
node --test providers/codex/test/codex-hive-watch.test.mjs \
             providers/codex/test/release-packaging.test.mjs   # codex controller + packaging
node providers/codex/tools/refresh-manifest.mjs --check        # codex gated hashes are current

drift_test.sh covers both lanes — providers/claude/ against ~/.claude, and providers/codex/skills/ against ~/.codex/skills. The codex lane is why it exists: those two skills once lived only as installed state with no upstream in any repository, so a machine reinstall would have destroyed them. conformance_test.sh --selftest first proves none of its own matchers can match an empty document, because a prose check that accepts anything reports green forever.

License

Apache 2.0. Copyright 2026 Arcada Labs. See LICENSE and NOTICE.