kingdom-cli 0.5.0

A markdown file-based CLI for software development with multi-agent council design, markdown tickets, and background worker loops.

Kingdom

Kingdom (kd) is a markdown file-based CLI for software development: design with a multi-agent council, track work as markdown tickets, and run background RALPH loops with worker peasants.

The kingdom metaphor is intentional: you are the King, debate your design documents with a council of frontier coding agent CLIs you already use (Claude Code and Codex), break the design into modular markdown tickets, and then peasants execute those tickets in parallel worktrees.

Gastown minus the polecats.

Why

• Multi-agent council — get perspectives from multiple frontier coding models, not just one opinion. Different models catch different things.
• Ticket-based execution — breaking work into scoped tickets fights context rot, lets you use cheaper models for already-designed work, or run tickets in parallel.
• Multi-agent reviews — reviews across models consistently catch bugs that single-agent reviews miss.
• Plain markdown files — tickets, designs, and council threads are all markdown. Your coding agents are already good at finding, reading, and updating markdown.
• CLI + TUI — the TUI is for humans; agent CLIs use kd directly to ask the council or other agents for opinions.
• Worklog audit trail — peasant worklogs capture decisions, bugs encountered, and test results in the ticket markdown, committed to git. You can always see why something was done, not just the diff.

Install

uv tool install kingdom-cli

Workflow Scales

kd scales down gracefully. You pick the parts of the workflow that fit the size of the work.

Full workflow (new features)

Design with the council, break into tickets, dispatch peasants, review, and merge.

kd start                   # initialize branch session
kd council chat --new      # discuss design with the council TUI
kd design approve          # lock in the design
# create tickets from the design (via the kingdom skill or manually)
kd peasant start <id>      # dispatch parallel workers
kd peasant review <id>     # review completed work
kd peasant accept <id>     # accept and close, or reject with feedback
kd done                    # archive and clean up

Medium workflow (refactors, smaller features)

Pull tickets into a branch, work them directly or with peasants. No design phase needed.

kd start
kd tk pull <id> <id>       # pull backlog tickets onto this branch
kd tk start <id>           # work tickets one at a time
kd tk close <id>
kd done

Lightweight workflow (bug fixes)

Work a single ticket, close it, make a PR. Or batch several bug-fix tickets on one branch.

kd start
kd tk create "fix: login redirect loop"
kd tk start <id>
# ... fix the bug ...
kd tk close <id>
kd done

Design docs, council sessions, and peasant workers are all optional. A branch with one ticket and no design doc is a perfectly valid kd workflow.

Getting Started

kd start                   # start a session on the current branch

Configure council agent CLIs in .kd/config.json (check effective config with kd config show).

Chat Modes

The council chat TUI (kd council chat) supports four modes, configured via council.chat.mode:

Mode	First turn	Auto-turns	Default
natural	parallel broadcast	shuffled round-robin	yes
round_robin	sequential fixed-order	sequential fixed-order
manual	only @mentioned	only @mentioned
broadcast	parallel to all	parallel to all

LLM-to-LLM @mentions in responses automatically bump the mentioned member to the front of the auto-turn queue.

How It Works

All state lives in .kd/ as plain Markdown and JSON files, tracked in git alongside your code:

.kd/
├── branches/                    # Active branch work
│   └── feature-oauth-refresh/
│       ├── design.md            # Design document
│       ├── breakdown.md         # Ticket breakdown
│       ├── tickets/             # Branch-specific tickets
│       │   ├── a1b2.md
│       │   └── c3d4.md
│       └── threads/             # Council discussion threads
├── backlog/                     # Unassigned tickets
│   └── tickets/
├── archive/                     # Completed branches
└── worktrees/                   # Git worktrees (gitignored)

No database. No server. Just files on disk.

Commands

Group	Description
kd start / kd done / kd status	Branch lifecycle — initialize, finish, and inspect sessions
kd design	Manage design documents (show, approve)
kd council	Multi-model council — ask, chat, review, show, list, watch, reset, retry
kd ticket (alias kd tk)	Ticket management — create, list, show, start, close, deps, and more
kd peasant	Worker agents — start, stop, review, accept, reject, msg, read, watch
kd config	View and manage configuration
kd doctor	Check config and agent CLIs

Run kd <command> --help for full flags and options.

Development

uv sync
source .venv/bin/activate
pytest tests/

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE for details.