manicure 0.2.5

Provider-neutral context control plane for coding agents

manicure

manifest + curate. Care for the cargo your coding agent carries.

A provider-neutral context control plane for coding agents. Sits as a reverse proxy in front of Claude, captures every /v1/messages exchange, normalises payloads into an internal representation, runs them through a deterministic curation pipeline, and optionally pauses for manual editing in a schema-aware editor.

No cert install. No system proxy settings. No sudo.

Install

uv tool install manicure     # recommended
pipx install manicure        # alternative

Or via the bootstrap script (installs uv first if missing):

curl -fsSL https://github.com/srobinson/manicure/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash

Quick start

# One command: starts the proxy + Claude Code together
manicure start                # in the current directory
manicure start ~/my-project   # in a specific working directory

# Proxy-only (bring your own client)
manicure start --no-claude

# then in another terminal
ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://localhost:8787 claude

Open http://localhost:8788 to see the live log, the rules UI, and the breakpoint editor.

What it does

Every /v1/messages request your agent sends gets:

1. Captured — full request and response, logged to ~/.manicure/exchanges/.
2. Curated — a deterministic pipeline applies your rules (strip tools, truncate system parts, rewrite descriptions, drop thinking blocks).
3. Paused (optional) — arm the breakpoint to edit the next request in a schema-aware editor before it forwards upstream.

All visible in a web UI at http://localhost:8788.

Why

A single Claude Code session routinely sends 285 KB payloads: 147 tools, 3 system parts, 5 message turns. Tools alone account for 67% of that. Manicure gives you visibility into what's being sent, a pipeline to strip and rewrite it, and a breakpoint to intervene before it hits the API.

Documentation

Full docs, architecture, and contributing guide: https://github.com/srobinson/manicure

License

Apache 2.0. See LICENSE.