swarph-cli 0.23.1

The `swarph` binary — a multi-LLM CLI and mesh-gateway client + bundled server (`swarph gateway`): one-shot prompts across providers, interactive `chat`, multi-provider `spawn` (claude/codex/antigravity via a ProviderMembrane with subprocess billing-scrub), `mesh` send/inbox/register, `brain-ask` over the swarph-brain (gbrain) semantic memory, git-backed `assisted_memory`, session `import`, and a stranded-session `watchdog`.

swarph-cli

One CLI for every LLM. Drive Claude, GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok from a single binary — then connect them into a coordinating mesh where agents from different vendors talk to each other through a shared protocol, each staying itself.

pip install swarph-cli
swarph --version

System requirement — a terminal multiplexer. The session verbs (spawn, cell, watchdog) drive a tmux-compatible multiplexer. On Linux/macOS install tmux (apt install tmux / brew install tmux). On Windows there is no native tmux — install psmux (a Rust tmux-for-Windows, MIT) with swarph install-multiplexer (fetches the pinned, checksum-verified binary into ~/.swarph/bin) or winget install marlocarlo.psmux.

What it is: a multi-provider LLM command line. Run one-shot prompts or an interactive REPL against any supported provider; spawn long-lived agent cells that persist across restarts and coordinate over a mesh; install hooks, MCP servers, and skills by content-addressed URI. An open, inspectable substrate — not a closed orchestration platform.

Who it's for: builders running more than one LLM who want them to cooperate instead of sitting in separate tabs — multi-agent systems across vendors, agnostic by design. A thin client over the swarph-mesh substrate library.

This is one of three repos in the v0.3.x architecture:

Repo	Role
swarph-mesh	Substrate Python package — Protocol + adapters + SwarphCall + MeshClient. Pure library, no CLI
swarph-cli	This repo — the swarph binary
swarph-meshlm	Simon Willison llm plugin

Commands

swarph "prompt"          one-shot against any provider (claude/openai/gemini/deepseek/grok)
swarph chat              interactive REPL — multi-turn, slash commands, live provider switch
swarph brain-ask "<q>"   search the swarph-brain (gbrain) memory — $0 cited answer or raw chunks
swarph brain serve       run the gbrain HTTP brain server (the $0 semantic memory)
swarph gateway serve     run the bundled mesh-gateway server (the mesh's coordination/DM hub)
swarph service serve     stand up a $0 subscription-LLM HTTP lane (claude/codex/gemini)
swarph channel <sub>     mesh channels — create/join/leave/list/members
swarph schedule <sub>    scheduled events — create/list/get/enable/disable/delete/fire-now
swarph lane <sub>        $0-lane orchestration — list/create/scale/delete/enqueue
swarph highlight "<x>"   log a highlight to the shared git-backed swarph timeline
swarph spawn <role>      launch a long-lived agent session as a named mesh cell
swarph daemon            foreground inbox-drain loop (the mesh doorbell)
swarph watchdog          detect + recover stranded agent sessions (cron- or systemd-driven)
swarph install-multiplexer   fetch the Windows tmux multiplexer (psmux) — pinned + checksum-verified
swarph add <uri>         install a hook / MCP server / skill by content-addressed URI
swarph hooks             install Claude Code hooks as reusable artifacts
swarph onboard / ratify  bring a new peer into the mesh (mechanics + witness ratification)
swarph import <path>     port a session from another CLI into swarph-native format

Each verb is documented below.

swarph brain-ask (v0.14.0)

Search the swarph-brain (gbrain) — the swarm's sovereign $0 semantic-retrieval memory — over MCP. The "does the swarm already know X?" reflex, as a one-shot.

# Cited $0 prose answer (retrieve -> facade synthesis), when SWARPH_FACADE is set:
$ swarph brain-ask "what's the cross-vendor fallback order?"

# Raw top-k memory chunks, no synthesis:
$ swarph brain-ask --no-synth --limit 3 "cross-vendor fallback governor order"

Config is via env, mirroring swarph mesh's token model: GBRAIN_MCP_URL or SWARPH_BRAIN_MCP (gbrain endpoint; defaults to http://127.0.0.1:8792/mcp), and the read token resolved --token-file > GBRAIN_TOKEN > SWARPH_BRAIN_TOKEN > the mesh per-peer token (~/.config/swarph/<self>.peer_token) — so the mesh peer token doubles as the gbrain read token. Optional SWARPH_FACADE / SWARPH_FACADE_TOKEN enable the $0 cited-synthesis pass; without them, brain-ask prints the raw ranked chunks.

swarph brain serve

brain-ask searches a running brain; brain serve runs one. gbrain (the sovereign $0 semantic-memory server) is an external binary — this verb is a thin launcher that applies the swarph-blessed defaults and replaces itself with gbrain serve:

$ swarph brain serve                                 # 127.0.0.1:8792, 1-year token TTL
$ swarph brain serve --bind 100.x.y.z --port 8792    # expose on a tailnet IP
$ swarph brain serve --gbrain-bin /opt/gbrain        # explicit binary (else GBRAIN_BIN / PATH)

Defaults are loopback bind (expose a tailnet IP explicitly) and a 1-year token TTL — a short TTL silently 401s long-lived mesh cells, a lesson learned the hard way. If gbrain isn't on PATH the verb prints an install hint and exits 2; brain-ask still queries any already-running brain.

swarph gateway

The mesh-gateway is the coordination/DM server every other verb talks to — the peer registry, the DM inbox/outbox, feature aggregation with allowlist + caps, and lane/service control. It used to be a separate deployment; it's now bundled, so any host can stand one up with a single command. It pairs with the client verbs (mesh, spawn, daemon, watchdog) and with brain-ask/gbrain to form the mesh's coordination plane.

The server stack (FastAPI/uvicorn) is an optional extra so the core client paths stay dependency-light:

$ pip install "swarph-cli[gateway]"
$ swarph gateway serve                      # binds 127.0.0.1:8788
$ swarph gateway serve --host 100.x.y.z --port 8788   # expose on a tailnet IP

--token sets the bearer (MESH_GATEWAY_TOKEN) for the served process; omit it and an existing env token is used, or a fresh one is minted and printed once so you can hand it to the mesh cells. --db PATH points the gateway at a specific SQLite file (MESH_DB_PATH). Run without the extra and the verb prints a pip install "swarph-cli[gateway]" hint and exits.

swarph service

Turn a subscription LLM CLI into a $0 HTTP lane the mesh can call — swarph service serve --provider <claude|codex|gemini> runs a small FastAPI app exposing POST /delegate (bearer-authed) + GET /health:

$ pip install "swarph-cli[service]"
$ swarph service serve --provider claude               # 127.0.0.1:8799, mints+prints a token
$ swarph service serve --provider gemini --host 100.x.y.z --port 8799   # expose on a tailnet IP
$ curl -s localhost:8799/delegate -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOK" \
    -d '{"prompt":"summarise this in one line: ..."}'   # -> {"text": "...", "cost_usd": 0.0}

The load-bearing piece is billing-scrub: the subprocess env has every known provider API-key var (ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, GEMINI_API_KEY, …) stripped, so the wrapped CLI can only use its $0 subscription auth — it can never silently fall back to metered API billing. Default loopback bind (expose a tailnet IP explicitly); the bearer is --token > SWARPH_SERVICE_TOKEN > a freshly minted+printed token. Note the gemini (agy) lane reads the prompt from argv only and hard-caps its length (~4 KB) — very long prompts are rejected, not truncated. Run without the extra and the verb prints a pip install "swarph-cli[service]" hint and exits.

swarph channel / swarph schedule / swarph lane

The gateway's automation control plane — channels (pub/sub), scheduled events, and the $0-lane orchestration — as first-class client verbs. They share mesh's auth: identity is --as / SWARPH_SELF, the bearer is --token-file / MESH_GATEWAY_TOKEN / the peer-token file, and --gateway (default http://localhost:8788) points at the hub.

# channels — converge work into pub/sub rooms
$ swarph channel create research --kind topic --description "market-structure notes"
$ swarph channel join research --wake-policy mentions_only
$ swarph channel list

# scheduled events — operator-gated recurring/ conditional fires (a 403 is surfaced verbatim)
$ swarph schedule create nightly-digest --trigger time --cron "0 7 * * *" \
    --target lab-ovh --task "compile the overnight digest" --context "[[some-anchor]]"
$ swarph schedule enable nightly-digest
$ swarph schedule fire-now nightly-digest

# lanes — drive the gateway's $0 worker pools
$ swarph lane list
$ swarph lane create judges --provider claude --model sonnet --n 3
$ swarph lane enqueue judges --prompt "score this design ..."
$ swarph lane scale judges --n 0

Pure-stdlib clients (no extra needed). Mutating channel/schedule/lane operations are operator-gated server-side — the verb just shapes and sends the request; an unauthorized caller sees the gateway's 403 on the normal error path.

swarph highlight

The swarph timeline is an append-only, multi-author TIMELINE.md — a git-backed continuous-learning log where every cell's highlights converge into one file. swarph highlight is the mechanics; you (or your agent) decide what's worth logging and which memory it links to.

$ swarph highlight "shipped the gateway verb" "[[some-memory]]"
$ swarph highlight "fixed the flaky test" --no-push          # local-only timeline

Defaults the timeline to ~/.swarph/timeline (auto-git init + a merge=union .gitattributes if absent, so concurrent appends from different cells auto-merge — never a lost highlight). Cell identity = --cell > SWARPH_CELL > git user > hostname. It pushes only when an origin remote exists (a shared mesh timeline); otherwise it commits locally. --when ISO8601 backfills a past highlight.

swarph spawn (Phase 7 — v0.6.0)

Wraps claude with three flags that make a session a stable, resumable named cell:

• --name <role> — display name for /resume picker
• --session-id <uuid> — pinned UUID, persisted to $XDG_STATE_HOME/swarph/sessions/<role>.session-id so re-spawns reuse the same session
• --append-system-prompt <text> — starter prompt injected without manual paste

# 1. Author a cell.yaml (one-time per role)
$ cat ~/.config/swarph/cells/researcher.yaml
schema_version: v1
name: researcher
role: researcher
cwd: ~/work
starter_prompt_path: ~/.claude/session_start_reminder.txt
provider: claude

# 2. Summon the cell (long-lived claude session, exec-replaced)
$ swarph spawn researcher
      ╭───╮
      │ ◉ │
   ╭──┴───┴──╮
   │  swarph │
   ╰──┬───┬──╯       spawn │ chat │ daemon
      │ ◉ │
      ╰───╯
[claude session takes over the terminal — same flags as `claude --name researcher --session-id <uuid> --append-system-prompt <starter>`]

# 3. Resume the same cell after exit — same UUID, same session
$ swarph spawn researcher     # picker shows ONE entry: "researcher" (stable disambiguation)

Resolution order for swarph spawn <role-or-path>:

1. --onboarding <path-or-url> (alias: --cell) — explicit override
2. Positional ending in .yaml/.yml or containing a path separator — literal path
3. Plain role name — $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/swarph/cells/<role>.yaml (default ~/.config/swarph/cells/)
4. No positional given — auto-discover ./cell.yaml in current directory

Useful flags:

Flag	Effect
--dry-run	Print resolved claude command + cell summary; do not exec
--no-starter	Skip starter-prompt injection even if cell.yaml sets one
--print-id	Print resolved session-id to stdout (capture for shell scripts)
--no-banner	Suppress the swarph banner on stderr
-- <claude-args>	Pass remaining args through to claude unchanged

cell.yaml schema is frozen at schema_version: "v1". v0.7 migrates the parser to swarph-shared as a symbol-relocation only — v0.6 cell.yaml files keep working unchanged. Breaking changes require a schema_version: "v2" bump and parallel-supported-version window per swarph-mesh DEPRECATIONS discipline.

Known limitations (v0.6). Single-instance-per-role only. Re-running swarph spawn <role> reuses the persisted UUID (R5 fix), so sibling-spawn (alpha + beta co-existing on the same peer-id) requires v0.7's --new-instance flag. Manual sibling spawning via tmux + explicit --session-id pinning still works unchanged; v0.6 does not regress that path, it just doesn't yet expose a CLI shape for it.

swarph daemon (Phase 5.6)

Replaces the 4-layer tail -F | grep | Monitor | systemd | cron poll stack with one foreground process. Liveness check collapses to:

ps aux | grep '[s]warph daemon'   # zero output = monitoring is down

$ swarph daemon --state-dir ~/swarph_state/researcher --self researcher
[swarph-daemon] starting: self=researcher gateway=http://localhost:8788 poll=30s ...
[2026-05-08T21:00:30Z] id=728 from=alice kind=answer → 'review on the two PRs looks good...'
[2026-05-08T21:01:10Z] id=729 from=alice kind=fyi → 'both PRs merged...'
^C
[swarph-daemon] signal 2 received — draining + flushing cursor
[swarph-daemon] shutdown: iterations=12 dms_seen=2 cursor.last_msg_id=729

Loud-on-down: never silently exits. Cursor writes are atomic (write-and-rename — corrupted mid-flush leaves the previous cursor intact). Backoff: 60s after 5 consecutive empty polls; 300s after 5 min of consecutive 5xx. SIGINT/SIGTERM trigger clean drain + flush.

--auto-act flag is documented for v0.5.1+ when handler registration via @swarph.on_dm(...) lands; v0.5.0 ships surface-only mode (DMs printed + JSONL-logged to inbox.log, no automatic replies).

swarph watchdog (Phase 7 — v0.7 stranded-session detection, v0.7.3 systemd install)

Detects stranded Claude sessions (API throttle / harness death) via cursor-mtime + tmux pgrep AND-gate, and recovers via A1 tmux send-keys wake-prompt → A2 swarph spawn respawn. Cell.yaml-pinned cursor + tmux session (F4) since v0.7.2.

One-shot mode (cron-callable, v0.7+):

*/5 * * * * swarph watchdog --check --cell lab >> ~/.local/log/swarph-watchdog.log 2>&1

Systemd timer install (v0.7.3+):

# Preview without writing (any user):
swarph watchdog --install-service --cell researcher --dry-run

# Install + enable (requires root for /etc/systemd/system writes):
sudo swarph watchdog --install-service --cell researcher

This writes three files:

Path	Purpose
/etc/systemd/system/swarph-watchdog.service	Type=oneshot, runs swarph watchdog --check
/etc/systemd/system/swarph-watchdog.timer	Fires every 5 minutes (OnUnitActiveSec=5min)
/etc/default/swarph-watchdog	Sets SWARPH_CELL=<role> for the service env

Then runs systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl enable --now swarph-watchdog.timer. Idempotent — re-running overwrites with current package version (newer-version semantics).

Monitoring:

systemctl status swarph-watchdog.timer       # is it scheduled?
systemctl list-timers swarph-watchdog.timer  # next fire?
journalctl -u swarph-watchdog.service -f     # live log
tail -f /var/log/swarph-watchdog.log         # append-log alternative

Why this matters: a long-running agent session can go silent after an API throttle or a harness death, and you won't notice until you go looking. The watchdog turns that into a self-healing loop — and the systemd install path means any host gets it with one command instead of hand-rolled cron.

Cross-host throttle-recovery wake (--dm-wake, "mesh-monitor mode"):

A1 (local tmux send-keys) and A2 (respawn) can only recover a cell on the watchdog's own host. --dm-wake adds the cross-host complement: the watchdog also scans the gateway /peers list, finds peers whose last_health is stale (throttle-stranded sessions on other hosts), and sends each a wake DM (kind="fyi") via the gateway /messages. The wake chain is watchdog → wake DM → target peer's sidecar/inbox-watcher → tmux send-keys wakes that session. Reuses the same --gateway URL + MESH_GATEWAY_TOKEN and the same --threshold staleness window as the local check.

swarph watchdog --check --peer researcher --gateway http://localhost:8788 --dm-wake --dm-wake-cooldown-sec 1800

• --dm-wake-cooldown-sec SEC (default 1800 / 30 min) — no-spam gate: each stale peer is DM-woken at most once per window, so a peer that stays stale across many ticks is woken once, not every tick. Per-peer cooldown state lives at $XDG_STATE_HOME/swarph/dm_wake_state.json (falls back to ~/.local/state/swarph/dm_wake_state.json).

Scope honesty (v1): the wake DM is wake + re-drain — the woken cell drains its inbox and resumes work; it does not resume the exact throttled in-flight task (per-cell task-checkpointing is future scope).

Exit codes:

Code	Meaning
0	no action (session healthy / no unread DMs queued) or install ok
1	A1 fired (local tmux send-keys wake-prompt)
2	A2 fired (local full respawn)
3	watchdog acted/couldn't-read — either a cross-host wake DM (A1-DM) fired this tick (local was a no-op) or detection error (cursor unreadable / gateway unreachable). Both map to 3.
4	configuration error (invalid args, no cell.yaml resolved); install needs sudo
5	install error (file write failed / systemctl failed)

Deploy: run --dm-wake on whichever always-on host you want to act as the mesh monitor — it watches every peer's health, not just its own, so one monitor covers the mesh.

swarph hooks

Installs Claude Code hooks as content wired into ~/.claude/settings.json — a hook becomes an installable artifact (a script + its event/matcher bindings merged into your settings) with no swarph-cli version bump per hook, the same way watchdog --install-service ships systemd units as bundled data.

swarph hooks init                 # install the recommended bundled set (cell-resilience)
swarph hooks add cell-resilience  # install one builtin by name
swarph hooks add ./my-hook        # install a local bundle dir (hook.json + script)
swarph hooks list                 # builtins + install status (installed|available)
swarph hooks remove cell-resilience

Trust model. Three tiers: builtin (trusted, bundled with swarph-cli — installs without a prompt), local (a bundle dir you point at — shown then confirmed before any write), and published/@cell/name (fails closed in v1 — never installs another cell's unreviewed code). Signed-publisher identity plus a publish-time security gate is the v2 model.

Bundled cell-resilience. Binds StopFailure/rate_limit + Stop/(all) to a script that writes $XDG_STATE_HOME/swarph/idle_since.json ({"session","reason","hook_event","ts"}, reason=throttle|normal) — the push-side throttle detector the watchdog's --dm-wake can read instead of polling. Observational only: it never blocks the session and always exits 0 (jq if present, printf/sed fallback otherwise).

Activation caveat. A freshly-installed hook does not go live in the current session — Claude Code can't hot-load it. Reopen /hooks (or restart the session) once to activate.

swarph add

The unified, typed install verb over the swarph commons — one command installs any commons artifact, routed by class. Where swarph hooks add installs only hooks, swarph add takes a single content-addressed URI and dispatches to the right per-class installer.

The URI ("magnet link"). An artifact is named by swarph://<class>/<publisher>/<name>[@<version>][#<sha256>]. The four classes are hook / mcp / skill / tool. The optional #sha256 is content-addressed: it pins the exact bytes of the artifact, so the install is tamper-evident and verifiable from any cell that serves the same content — the BitTorrent-magnet property (the URI, not a trusted host, is the source of truth).

swarph add swarph://hook/swarph-builtin/cell-resilience   # install a builtin hook
swarph add swarph://mcp/swarph-builtin/everything         # install the reference MCP server
swarph add swarph://skill/swarph-builtin/swarph-intro     # install a builtin skill

(tool is not yet implemented — it bridges to swarph-mesh's adapter registry as a follow-on.)

Trust model (v1). Builtin publishers (swarph-builtin) install; any other publisher fails closed — a published/untrusted URI never installs another cell's unreviewed code. Signed-publisher identity plus a per-class publish-time security gate is the v2 model. When a URI carries #sha256, the resolved artifact is hash-verified and refused on mismatch — nothing is written.

Content-addressed, not host-addressed. A swarph:// URI resolves to the artifact, not to a particular server: the CLI fetches it from any cell or registry that publishes it and hash-verifies against #sha256, so the same artifact can be served from anywhere — the BitTorrent-magnet property. Today the URI is copy-paste; a swarph:// OS protocol-handler for click-to-install — the way magnet: opens a torrent client — is a future UX layer.

Activation. Like hooks, freshly-installed hooks and skills are not hot-loaded into the running session — reopen /hooks (or restart the session) once to pick them up.

swarph onboard + swarph ratify (Phase 5.5)

Onboarding splits into a mechanics phase (swarph onboard) that automates the boring parts (registry POST, scaffolding, token resolution) and a manual contract phase (the new peer composes the handshake DM in their own words). A witness peer judges the handshake and runs swarph ratify <peer> to flip ratified=true, gating task_claim server-side.

# New peer self-onboards
$ swarph onboard newpeer
[1/6] validate_node_name('newpeer')          ok
[2/6] prepare peer-registry row                 ok
[3/6] resolve MESH_GATEWAY_TOKEN                ok
[4/6] POST .../peers/register                   ok (registered_unratified=true)
[5/6] verify_subscription_setup()               ok
[6/6] scaffold ~/swarph_state/newpeer/       ok

[manual] handshake template at /tmp/newpeer-handshake.md
  Edit each section in your own words, then send to your witness peer.

# After peer composes + sends handshake, witness ratifies
$ SWARPH_WITNESS=alice swarph ratify newpeer \
    --reason "handshake covers all four invariants in own words"
[1/6] validate_node_name('newpeer')          ok
[2/6] verify witness 'alice' is ratified        ok
[3/6] verify 'newpeer' is registered_unratified  ok
[4/6] PATCH .../peers/newpeer                ok
[5/6] verify peer_ratifications audit row       ok (id=N reason='...')
[6/6] invalidate local TTL cache                ok

Server-side gating (mesh-gateway PR A): unratified peers can read inbox + send DMs (so the handshake itself works) but task_claim returns 403. Witness must itself be ratified — no self-ratification, no unratified-witnesses-ratifying-others. Audit log (peer_ratifications) is append-only.

swarph chat

Interactive REPL against any of the five swarph-mesh adapters (gemini / deepseek / claude / openai / grok). Multi-turn conversation history accumulates in-memory; cumulative session cost + token totals tracked.

$ swarph chat --provider claude
swarph chat — Phase 5 REPL
provider=claude model=(adapter default) caller=cli.repl.ubuntu

Type a message and press Enter to send. Slash commands:
  /help  /clear  /system  /provider  /model  /history  /cost  /quit
Ctrl-D to exit.

> hello
Hi! How can I help...
# 8+12t  $0  0.34s

> /provider gemini
[switched to provider=gemini; model reset to adapter default; history cleared]

> /cost
[turns=1  in=8  out=12  cost=$0]

> /quit
[swarph-chat] bye.

Slash commands:

• /help — print available commands
• /quit, /exit (or Ctrl-D) — exit
• /clear, /reset — clear history (keeps system prompt)
• /system [prompt] — set or clear system prompt
• /provider <name> — switch provider (resets history)
• /model <name> — switch model
• /history — print running message list
• /cost — cumulative session cost + tokens

Out of scope until Phase 5.6 (swarph daemon): inbox drain coroutine, /inbox and /reply slash commands. Streaming output ships alongside the cross-adapter stream() work in v0.5+ of swarph-mesh.

swarph import

Session import is the knowledge half of onboarding — gives a memory-carrying peer (or a human migrating between CLIs) the substantive context they're bringing into the swarph, paired with the contract half (the handshake DM acknowledging the four invariants).

# Inspect what would be imported (lossy → honest framing)
$ swarph import ~/.claude/projects/.../X.jsonl --report-only

# Commit — writes ~/.swarph/sessions/<session-id>.jsonl
$ swarph import ~/.claude/projects/.../X.jsonl

# Refuse-with-error if target exists (protects continuation turns)
$ swarph import same-source.jsonl
swarph import: target /home/.../X.jsonl already exists (...)
To proceed:
  --force                  overwrite (destroys continuation turns)
  --target-session NAME    write to a different file

What ports cleanly: plain user/assistant/system text, role tags, conversation order.

What's lossy (counted in report, kept as visible text where possible):

• thinking blocks (Anthropic-specific reasoning trace)
• tool_use blocks (call shape doesn't port across providers)
• tool_result blocks (companion drop with tool_use)

What's dropped: attachments (would need re-upload), provider-side KV cache, conversation IDs, cache_control annotations.

Honest framing: teleport is "import + continue", not "freeze and resume" — the first turn after import on a new provider pays cold-cache cost.

$ swarph "say pong" --provider gemini
Pong!
# 3+26t  $0.0000  0.73s  caller=cli.oneshot.ubuntu  provider=gemini

swarph compress (v0.11 — context-surface compression)

Compress a machine-read context surface (memory index, manual, agent brief) to reclaim always-loaded space/tokens. The principle: fluent natural language carries redundancy a model infers for free — the decompressor is the model itself. Proven by hand on the OMEGA swarm: MEMORY.md 37→16KB (58%), CLAUDE.md 241→21KB always-loaded (91%, archival).

Opt-in by marker (fails safe). A file is compressible only if it carries an explicit marker; unmarked files are left untouched. The model's judgment is spent once, in-session, authoring the marker — runtime is pure-Python marker parsing, no model in the hot path.

<!-- swarph:compress lever=archival boundary="^## Session" -->
<!-- swarph:compress lever=shorthand pointer="](*.md)" floor=0.45 -->

Two levers, different risk classes:

Lever	What	Loss class	Model?
archival	relocate the cold tail below boundary to <file>.archive.<ext> + leave a pointer	lossless (nothing destroyed)	no — pure Python, zero tokens
shorthand	rewrite a pointer-bearing INDEX to telegraphic shorthand	lossy, bounded to index-over-preserved-source (recoverable by construction)	yes (claude -p subscription path)

Shorthand is gated: redundancy-floor (refuse if already dense), links-superset (every []() survives), index-over-source (every entry keeps a resolvable pointer), and an adversarial verify-expand (an independent model hunts for a dropped fact; one found → abort).

swarph compress MEMORY.md                      # dry-run: classify, propose, report savings
swarph compress MEMORY.md --apply              # write (atomic tempfile→mv + .bak + verify-gate)
swarph compress MEMORY.md --verify-idempotent  # assert compress(compress(x)) ≈ noop

Dry-run is the default — nothing mutates without --apply. Cron-friendly exit codes:

Code	Meaning
0	analyzed/savings-reported (or applied clean)
2	no such file
3	refused — unmarked (leave breathing)
4	refused — archival: no boundary line matched
5	refused — shorthand: below redundancy floor (already dense)
6	refused — shorthand dropped a link / lost a pointer-to-source
7	refused — adversarial verify-expand found a dropped fact
8	refused — not idempotent (second pass kept cutting; signal-eating alarm)

Design spec: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-06-11-swarph-context-compressor-design.md (in the hedge-fund-mcp repo).

--json mode semantics

--json is a harness trigger, not a strict-validation gate. When set, swarph routes the response through the swarph-mesh JSON harness:

• A permissive {"type": "object"} schema is synthesised when --schema is absent (Phase 5+ adds Pydantic validation).
• The harness retries once with [USER]-turn feedback on parse failure.
• Malformed-JSON exits with code 1 + raw text on stdout for caller recovery. Useful for shell scripts:

  if swarph "give me a trade" --json; then
    # parsed dict was on stdout
    ...
  fi
  

• Pretty-printed parsed dict on stdout when parse succeeds; error_class=malformed_json shows up in the stderr attribution footer when it doesn't.

Why split CLI from substrate

The swarph-mesh library is imported by any program that wants to drive the mesh against the Protocol directly — orchestrators, judges, automation. Those callers don't need the CLI surface or the console-script entry point. Keeping the CLI in a separate repo means library users pip install swarph-mesh without pulling argparse + REPL plumbing they'll never run, while pip install swarph-cli gives you the standalone swarph binary.

Install (dev)

git clone https://github.com/BrainSurfing-tech/swarph-cli
cd swarph-cli
python -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest
swarph --version

License

MIT. Pierre Samson + Claude Opus, 2026.