pester 1.0.0

Accountability engine for founders — stable core CLI with beta integrations for sync, bot, and remote MCP

pester

An accountability engine for founders. Markdown in. Decisions out.

The Problem

Your meeting notes are in Notion. Your action items are in Linear. Your decisions are in Google Docs. Your transcripts are in Otter. Every tool has a piece of the picture. None of them have the whole thing.

You spend more time searching for context than making decisions. And when something falls through the cracks, you don't find out until the board meeting.

The Way Out

pester turns a folder of markdown files into a structured operating system for running a company. You write in markdown. pester reads your vault and tells you exactly where things stand: who owes what by when, what's overdue, what's stale, and what needs your attention.

The founder's job is accountability. Not strategy decks. Not culture docs. Knowing who owes what by when, and whether it's happening. pester makes that trivially easy.

Philosophy

Why markdown. Markdown survives every tool migration. Your Notion export is markdown. Your Obsidian vault is markdown. Every SaaS product will eventually die. Your .md files won't.

Why CLI. CLIs compose. Pipe pester actions --overdue into whatever you want. AI tools speak CLI natively. And it's fast.

Why accountability. Because that's the job. Everything else is noise unless it feeds into the loop of: who owes what, by when, is it happening.

Quick Start

# Install
pip install pester

# Create a new vault
pester init my-vault
cd my-vault

# Track an action
pester actions add --owner stan --due 2026-03-25 --desc "Ship v1"

# Check vault health
pester health

# View dashboard
pester dashboard

Or try with sample data: cd examples/sample-vault && pester health

Status for 1.0.0: the core CLI and PyPI package are the stable surface. Google Drive sync, Telegram sync, bot/daemon automation, and remote self-hosted MCP are beta surfaces for this soft launch. The web Custom Connector is not supported yet.

Features

• Action Tracking — Extract and track action items from meetings, messages, and documents. AI + regex hybrid extraction with automatic deduplication. See what's overdue at a glance.
• Semantic Search — RAG-powered search using ONNX E5 multilingual embeddings and ChromaDB. Find anything by meaning, not just keywords.
• Health Checks — Detect stale journals, orphaned documents, broken wikilinks, and overdue actions across your entire vault.
• Dashboard — HTML dashboard with auto-refresh, terminal output, or a local web server. Full visibility into vault status.
• Multi-Source Sync (Beta) — Pull content from Google Drive and Telegram into your vault automatically.
• Background Daemon (Beta) — File watcher with auto-extraction, scheduled briefings/digests, and escalation alerts. Runs as a macOS launchd service.
• Escalation Engine — Automatically escalates overdue actions through warning, critical, and blocked levels with smart suppression.
• Interactive Bot Agent (Beta) — DM the Telegram bot to manage tasks, search the vault, and get health reports. OpenAI and Anthropic function calling with persistent conversation history and access control.
• Coaching System (Beta) — Copilot (directive) and provocateur (reflective) modes with automatic time-of-day switching. Scheduled daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly coaching prompts.
• Goal Tracking — Track OKRs and milestones in goals/ with progress computed from tagged actions. Energy budget and capacity enforcement.
• Voice Transcription (Beta) — Voice, audio, and video note messages transcribed via Groq Whisper and processed as text by the bot agent.
• LLM Provider Abstraction — Swap between OpenAI and Anthropic for both bot chat and action extraction. Provider-agnostic tool format with automatic model fallback.
• MCP Integration — Expose your vault to Claude Code via MCP tools for AI-assisted knowledge work. Local stdio is supported today; remote streamable-http deployments are beta.

Use with Claude Code

pester is designed to work as an AI agent's accountability backend. Install the MCP extra and connect Claude Code to your vault:

Stable today: local stdio MCP with Claude Code / Claude Desktop. Beta: remote streamable-http MCP behind bearer auth. The web Custom Connector is still coming soon pending OAuth support.

pip install pester[mcp]
pester mcp  # starts the MCP server

Add to your project's .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pester": {
      "command": "pester",
      "args": ["--vault", "/path/to/your/vault", "mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Then ask Claude: "What actions are overdue?", "Add an action for stan to review the pitch deck by Friday", or "Give me a standup report." Claude calls structured vault tools, not grep. 17 tools available: actions, search, health, goals, standup, briefing, and more.

How It Compares

Feature	pester	Notion	Obsidian	Linear
Accountability tracking	Built-in (actions, owners, deadlines)	Manual databases	Plugin-dependent	Issues only
Markdown-native	Yes, files on disk	Proprietary format	Yes	No
CLI-first	Yes, composable	No	No	No
Semantic search	Built-in (E5 + ChromaDB)	Built-in	Plugin	Built-in
AI extraction	Hybrid LLM + regex	AI add-ons	Plugin	No
Self-hosted	Yes, your filesystem	Cloud	Local files	Cloud
Free / OSS	MIT, free forever	Freemium	Freemium + paid sync	Paid
Background automation	Daemon with escalation	Automations	No	Automations
AI agent integration	17 MCP tools	No native MCP	Agent skills (new)	No

As of April 2026.

Installation

Extras status for 1.0.0: [drive], [telegram], [bot], [daemon], and remote [mcp] deployments are beta surfaces in this soft launch.

Command	What you get
pip install pester	Core CLI — actions, health, dashboard, init (~5MB)
pip install pester[search]	+ Semantic search with ChromaDB + ONNX E5 (~1.1GB with model)
pip install pester[drive]	+ Google Drive sync (beta)
pip install pester[telegram]	+ Telegram sync + notifications (Bot API, beta)
pip install pester[mcp]	+ MCP server for Claude Code (remote bearer-auth beta)
pip install pester[daemon]	+ Background daemon with file watching (beta)
pip install pester[llm]	+ LLM-powered action extraction (OpenAI + Anthropic)
pip install pester[bot]	+ Interactive Telegram bot agent (beta)
pip install pester[all]	Everything
pip install pester[dev]	+ pytest, pytest-cov, ruff, build (for contributors)

Install from source:

git clone https://github.com/stansolo93/pester.git
cd pester
pip install -e ".[all,dev]"

Architecture

See docs/architecture.md for the full component diagram and storage layout.

CLI Reference

Command	Description
pester init <path>	Create a new vault from template
pester actions	List all actions (default: open only)
pester actions add	Add a new action item
pester actions done <slug>	Mark an action as complete
pester actions extract	Extract actions from meeting notes
pester health	Run vault health checks
pester dashboard	Generate HTML dashboard (opens in browser)
pester dashboard --terminal	Print dashboard to terminal (ANSI)
pester dashboard --serve	Start local dashboard server with auto-refresh
pester briefing <slug>	Generate a briefing for a person or project
pester digest	Generate a weekly digest
pester search <query>	Semantic search across vault (requires [search])
pester index	Build or update the search index
pester standup	Generate standup notes (yesterday done + today planned)
pester status	One-line vault health summary with health score
pester model download	Download the embedding model
pester model status	Check embedding model status
pester wikilinks validate	Find broken wikilinks in vault
pester sync	Sync from all configured sources
pester sync drive	Sync from Google Drive (requires [drive])
pester sync telegram	Sync from Telegram (requires [telegram])
pester mcp	Start MCP server (requires [mcp])
pester config check	Validate pester.yaml — catches unknown keys and invalid values
pester status	One-line vault health summary (for terminal prompt integration)
pester daemon run	Start the background daemon (file watcher + scheduler)
pester daemon status	Check if the daemon is running
pester adopt [path]	Onboard an existing vault (scan, map folders, generate config)
pester daemon install	Install as a system service (macOS launchd or Linux systemd)
pester daemon uninstall	Remove the system service (launchd or systemd)
pester diff-scope	Output scope variables for CI/diff analysis

Global flags:

Flag	Description
-v / --verbose	Enable debug logging to stderr
-q / --quiet	Suppress non-essential output

Configuration

pester is configured via pester.yaml at the root of your vault. See docs/vault-structure.md for the full schema reference.

vault:
  name: "Acme"
  language: en
  owner: "Your Name"

priorities:
  - name: "Q1 Launch"
    deadline: 2026-03-20

health:
  journal_stale_days: 3
  decision_review_days: 60

# Bot agent (requires: pip install pester[bot])
bot:
  enabled: true
  provider: openai          # or "anthropic"
  allowed_users: [123456789]

# LLM extraction (requires: pip install pester[llm])
llm:
  provider: openai
  model: gpt-5.4-mini

# Scheduled coaching prompts
scheduler:
  scheduled_prompts:
    morning_focus:
      time: "08:00"
      template: morning_focus

Documentation

• Getting Started — Step-by-step setup guide
• Vault Structure — Directory layout, pester.yaml schema, templates
• Integrations — Google Drive, Telegram, bot agent, and MCP setup with beta notes

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup, testing, and PR process.

Security

See SECURITY.md for vulnerability reporting.

License

MIT