synapse-channel 0.98.27

Local-first coordination bus for AI agents across one repository or a whole ecosystem: work claims, presence, chat, a shared plan, and resource sharing over a WebSocket hub

Stop parallel AI coding agents from clobbering each other's files.
Local-first coordination bus — file-scope claims, a shared plan, and durable leases — for one repository or a whole ecosystem of them.

A local-first coordination bus for a fleet of AI agents working in parallel — within a single repository or spread across a whole ecosystem of them. One WebSocket hub is the shared source of truth for presence, work claims, chat, task status, and resource offers: agents address each other across projects and share one plan, while file-scope claims keep the agents in any one repository off each other's files.

The bus is transport-light (one dependency, websockets), hub-centric by design (one place owns presence, leases, and history), and runs entirely on the local machine. Model workers reply on-channel through any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including a local Ollama server, with a deterministic rule-based fallback for offline use.

Your existing agents plug in without new code. Any Model Context Protocol host — Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor — reaches the bus through the bundled synapse mcp server, which exposes the coordination verbs (claim, release, hand off, send, task) as MCP tools and the board, agents, and resources as read-only MCP resources. Agents that speak A2A connect through the Agent Card face instead. The hub itself stays protocol-agnostic and the core install keeps its single dependency — the MCP and A2A adapters are optional extras (pip install 'synapse-channel[mcp]'). See the MCP guide.

Coordinate. Observe. Govern.

Synapse's daily promise is three explicit loops:

• Coordinate before agents collide: synapse git-init, synapse git-claim, synapse task, and syn ack turn work scope, dependencies, and evidence into shared state instead of side-channel notes.
• Observe the fleet from durable state: synapse who, synapse state, synapse dashboard, synapse event-query, and observed peer rows show who is present, what is claimed, what changed, and which peer-hub facts are advisory.
• Govern risky actions with evidence: policy checks, approvals, release receipts, Merkle roots, ACL surfaces, federation, and encryption-key commands make operator decisions auditable. Governance surfaces report by default; operators decide what blocks a merge, release, or cross-hub action.
• Protect the durable log at rest with optional SQLCipher page encryption for the live hub event store (plus whole-file AES-GCM envelopes for relay logs, A2A state, cursors, and archives). See SQLCipher live event store below.

At a glance

graph LR
    A1["Agent"] --> H
    A2["Agent"] --> H
    A3["Worker"] --> H
    SUP["Supervisor"] --> H
    H["SynapseHub<br/>single source of truth"] --> CL["Claims & leases<br/>scope · epoch · checkpoint"]
    H --> BB["Blackboard<br/>plan + progress"]
    H --> CAP["Capabilities<br/>cards + routing"]
    H --> LOG["Event log (SQLite WAL)<br/>durable · optional SQLCipher at rest"]

A claim leases a unit of work with a file scope, so two agents never edit the same files; the plan, handoffs, checkpoints, and a stall supervisor keep the work moving; and the durable event log means a hub restart resumes live leases rather than losing them.

Core and Optional Layers

SYNAPSE CHANNEL ships as one installable package, but the public surface is tiered so the lean bus stays clear:

Layer	Taxonomy tier	What belongs there
Local coordination core	stable	The hub, send/wait/listen/arm, claims, tasks, locks, status, board, init, and fleet bootstrap commands used for daily coordination.
Edge adapters	adapter	MCP, A2A, git hooks, tmux/provider bridges, shell hooks, ingestion, and worker seats that connect existing tools to the bus.
Read-only operator views	analysis	Doctor, state, dashboard, causality, multihub, reliability, trust graph, directory, accounting, manifests, and event queries.
Governance and integrity	governance	Policy checks, approvals, ACL/role surfaces, federation, Merkle roots, release receipts, reproduction, compaction, encrypt-key / SQLCipher key operations.
Lab surfaces	experimental	Benchmarking, participant fabric, route-task, sandbox, workflow, TTL advice, memory recall, auto-action, and resource bidding.

The authoritative map is synapse_channel.surface_taxonomy and the generated operator view is Public surface and stability. Adapters and lab surfaces can be installed and used from the same package, but they do not change the single-dependency local core.

Coming: Studio — the dashboard is growing into an operator Studio: a control plane that answers, at a glance, what is happening, what is at risk, and what is safe to do next. The instrument-panel design system, /studio reference, live /studio/command shell, security-posture panel, and event-log LiveFeed have shipped. Local-first and read-only by default — an organisation-level workbench is planned as a separate layer.

Install

python -m pip install synapse-channel       # the release from PyPI
python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"           # or an editable dev checkout
# optional: live hub event-store page encryption (SQLCipher)
python -m pip install 'synapse-channel[sqlcipher]'
# optional: whole-file AES-GCM envelope helpers (encrypt-key profile/migrate/rekey)
python -m pip install 'synapse-channel[encryption]'

For an editable checkout, keep the local .venv aligned with the repository's declared dev, docs, and benchmark extras:

.venv/bin/python tools/check_dev_dependency_drift.py --check
.venv/bin/python tools/audit_dependency_tooling.py --check

The second check is offline. It verifies that local preflight still covers the expected tool gates, GitHub Actions are pinned to full commit SHAs, Dependabot covers actions/Python/Docker, and the PyPI publish/download metadata surfaces remain wired.

This installs the synapse command. To run the hub as an always-on local service or a container, see the deployment guide (a systemd user unit and docker compose are both included).

Two optional shell conveniences ship with the CLI: synapse completions bash|zsh|fish prints tab completion for every subcommand (generated from the live parser, so it never drifts), and synapse install-shell-hook adds the guarded block that auto-arms a wake listener in each new terminal:

synapse completions bash > ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions/synapse
synapse install-shell-hook          # auto-arm Bash, Zsh, and Fish terminals

First 60 seconds

On a clean Python environment, verify the installed CLI before wiring agents into a real repository:

python -m pip install synapse-channel
synapse doctor
synapse demo
synapse quickstart-coding

synapse doctor reports local setup issues such as identity, hub exposure, root-filesystem pressure, and missing waiters. A brand-new machine may warn that no hub or waiter is running; that is expected before service setup. synapse demo starts its own local hub, drives a planner/worker coordination flow, and succeeds when it prints:

success: coordination demo completed

synapse quickstart-coding creates a temporary coding-fleet workspace, runs the same no-collision coding demo used by generated workspaces, removes the temporary workspace after success, and prints:

success: coding fleet demo completed

Or run the whole first-run sequence as one command:

synapse fleet-init

It runs the doctor (--fix to repair the default local hub and waiter), scaffolds a persistent ./synapse-fleet workspace, probes which provider CLIs this machine can seat (claude, codex, kimi, ollama, …), runs the demo smoke, and prints the next-steps plan — waiter arming, per-provider seat commands, git-init, dashboard — with the workspace's project name filled in.

Fastest safe trial path

After the self-contained demos pass, try Synapse against a real checkout in this order:

python -m pip install synapse-channel
synapse doctor
synapse demo
synapse quickstart-coding
synapse git-init --name trial-agent
synapse dashboard --port 8765
synapse a2a-card --endpoint-url http://127.0.0.1:8877
synapse a2a-conformance
synapse a2a-serve --endpoint-url http://127.0.0.1:8877

Run this in a disposable or already-versioned repository. synapse git-init --name trial-agent installs the claim-aware git hooks and writes the local .synapse/ conventions guide before agents edit files. The A2A bridge step is optional and local-only: it lets another local tool inspect the Agent Card or talk to the HTTP+JSON bridge, but it is not an external conformance claim. Do not bind it off-loopback without bearer auth.

Releases

This package is developed in the open and dogfooded daily: a fleet of coding agents runs its own coordination on it, so problems surface in real use and are fixed quickly. Releases are therefore frequent and mostly small — fixes and hardening rather than churn. The wire protocol and the public Python API stay backwards-compatible within a major version; any breaking change is called out in the changelog.

Current 0.x releases are pre-1.0 development releases, not the stable commercial release line. 1.0.0 is planned as the first stable commercial release of SYNAPSE CHANNEL, with the operational contracts, packaging, support surface, and commercial licensing terms documented as part of that release.

SYNAPSE CHANNEL is seeking startup funding, strategic partners, and aligned ecosystem co-owners who want to help mature the coordination layer for production multi-agent development. See commercial licensing or write to [e-mail].

If you need a fixed target, pin a version (synapse-channel==X.Y.Z); to get the latest fixes, track the newest release. Both are supported.

Quick start

Launch a hub plus one or two local model workers in one command:

synapse team

Then, from another terminal, watch the channel or send a message:

synapse listen --name USER
synapse send --name USER --target FAST "what is the status of TASK-1?"
synapse send --require-recipient --target FAST "ping"  # fail if FAST is not online

One-shot sends avoid the common waiter-name collision: synapse send --name api-dev-rx ... sends as api-dev, leaving the persistent api-dev-rx wake socket connected. Add --require-recipient for directed sends that must not silently miss: the hub returns a private receipt naming the matched online recipients, and the command exits non-zero when none match --target.

For selected sensitive payloads, encrypt the body before it reaches the hub and decrypt it only on the recipient side:

synapse send --target FAST \
  --encrypt-key-file ./payload.key \
  --encrypt-key-id project-main-v1 \
  --encrypt-recipient FAST \
  "private handoff note"
synapse listen --name FAST --for FAST --decrypt-key-file ./payload.key

The hub still sees sender, target, channel id, key id, recipient names, nonce, ciphertext, and delivery metadata. This does not manage key discovery or rotation.

Running pieces individually

synapse hub --port 8876
synapse hub --port 8876 --db ./synapse.db            # crash-safe: resumes leases + history on restart
synapse hub --port 8876 --relay-log ./feed.ndjson    # mirror the channel to a compact file for observers
synapse hub --shutdown-close-timeout 5               # bound active socket close handshakes on stop
synapse hub --max-progress-per-author 500            # cap retained board progress per author
synapse hub --max-findings-per-agent 200             # cap durable findings admitted per agent
synapse hub --tls-certfile ./hub.crt --tls-keyfile ./hub.key  # native wss://
synapse worker --name FAST --provider ollama --model gemma3:4b
synapse worker --name OFFLINE --provider rule        # no network, canned replies
synapse worker --name TIER --provider tiered --model small --heavy-model big  # route trivial→rule, hard→heavy
synapse relay ./feed.ndjson                          # decode and print that file as readable lines
synapse ingest ./synapse.db --memory --cursor ./mem.cursor  # stream durable memory events since a seq cursor (NDJSON)
synapse memory-recall ./synapse.db "transport handoff"       # local recall over durable memory records
synapse compact ./synapse.db --all --max-checkpoints-per-task 3 --archive-report ./compact-report.html
synapse board                                        # print the shared task/progress blackboard
synapse task declare BUILD --title "compile"         # declare/update the shared plan from the CLI
synapse task update BUILD --status done              # mark a plan task done so dependents unblock
syn ack BUILD --evidence "pytest -q"                 # post evidence and mark a board task done
synapse supervisor --idle-seconds 300 --history-multiplier 3  # re-offer stalled plan tasks
synapse manifest                                     # print capability cards, including contract counts
synapse directory                                    # print discovery-only agents/resources
synapse route-task BUILD --limit 3 --event-store ./synapse.db  # add observed evidence
synapse resource-bids BUILD --resource-kind gpu      # rank live resource offers without reserving capacity
synapse a2a-card --endpoint-url https://agent.example.com/a2a/v1  # emit A2A Agent Card JSON
synapse a2a-serve --endpoint-url http://127.0.0.1:8877             # run the HTTP+JSON A2A bridge
synapse doctor                                       # check for common misconfigs (identity, exposure, hub, waiter)
synapse demo                                         # installed self-check: local hub + planner/worker flow
synapse quickstart-coding                            # create a temporary coding fleet workspace and run it
synapse new coding-fleet ./demo-fleet                # scaffold a runnable two-agent coding demo workspace
synapse hub --host 0.0.0.0 --token s3cret            # require a shared secret when binding off-loopback
synapse hub --host 0.0.0.0 --token s3cret --tls-certfile ./hub.crt --tls-keyfile ./hub.key
synapse hub --max-connections-per-host 4             # cap simultaneous sockets from one remote host
synapse send --token s3cret --name USER "hello"      # agents present the token to a secured hub

Use it with your coding agent

Synapse coordinates the agents you already run; it does not replace them. Its MCP and A2A adapters are interop surfaces: they let Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Codex, Copilot-style hosts, Aider, orchestration frameworks, and other agent tools participate in one local coordination bus while those tools still own prompting, model choice, tool use, and editor/runtime behavior. The integration demo matrix lists three narrow, repeatable paths and the unsupported behavior that remains outside each demo.

• Claude Code / Claude Desktop / Cursor (MCP): point the host at the MCP server and every coordination verb shows up as a tool — no Synapse-specific code.

  pip install 'synapse-channel[mcp]'
  synapse mcp --uri ws://localhost:8876        # add this to the host's MCP server config
  

• Aider, or any non-MCP tool: claim a file scope before editing and let a git hook release it on commit, so two sessions never touch the same files.

  synapse quickstart-coding                    # optional: run a temporary no-collision coding demo
  synapse new coding-fleet ./demo-fleet        # optional: keep the generated workspace
  synapse git-init --name aider-1              # one step: install the hooks + write the conventions guide
  synapse git-claim --task-id AUTH --paths src/auth --name aider-1
  aider src/auth/*.py                          # ... edit; the post-commit hook releases the claim
  

• Check the wiring: synapse doctor reports the common setup mistakes — no live waiter, a hub exposed without a token, an accidental identity, or a pressured root filesystem — each with its fix. Use --disk-path <path> to check the filesystem that holds a specific workspace or cache.

• Inspect the live board: synapse dashboard --port 8765 opens a loopback-only read-only HTML view of roster, claims, board tasks, progress, fleet visibility, task-dependency graph edges, branch-conflict candidates, release receipts, and advertised capabilities, with the same snapshot available at /snapshot.json for local tooling. Pass --a2a-state-file <path> to add persisted A2A task and push-config counts to the fleet section. The dashboard derives task dependencies from the blackboard snapshot and uses live claim metadata for branch conflicts; run synapse conflicts --check-diff when you need client-side git-diff refinement. The state snapshot also carries dead_letters — directed chats that reached no live connection, per target with counts — so a message nobody is listening for shows up on the page instead of being discovered by a human relaying it. The dashboard is growing into an operator Studio — open /studio for the design-system reference — and ships a React cockpit under clients/cockpit/ (build instructions in its README; serve the built bundle with synapse dashboard --cockpit-dist clients/cockpit/dist). If you deliberately expose the dashboard with --allow-non-loopback, pass --dashboard-token <token> and require clients to send Authorization: Bearer <token>; when omitted on an exposed bind, Synapse generates and prints a startup token. Add --observed-peer HUB=URI to include advisory peer-hub rows in the browser and /snapshot.json; those rows are labelled observed@HUB and never grant local claims.

• Verify a release redeploy: synapse doctor --redeploy-checklist prints package, service, roster, durable-state, and git-hook checks for a post-release local fleet restart. It does not restart services by itself; it gives the operator copyable commands for the installed executable, hub service, presence daemon, wake listener, event log, and git hook path.

• Install the always-on local services: synapse init prints or installs the hub, project presence, and non-LLM wake listener units. doctor --fix prints the exact commands when a waiter is missing.

  synapse init --project myrepo --identity myrepo/worker --install-user-services
  synapse init --project myrepo --identity myrepo/worker --start-user-services
  synapse doctor --fix
  

• Launch a provider command with Synapse identity: worker-session exports the identity variables before the provider starts. Interactive terminal providers such as Codex, Claude, Kimi, and Grok run in a persistent tmux session by default when launched from an interactive terminal, with a directed waiter kept alive in the background. Non-terminal commands keep the temporary syn arm sidecar path.

  synapse worker-session --identity myrepo/worker -- codex --sandbox danger-full-access
  

• Inspect or control the tmux wake path manually: codex-tmux is the diagnostic/admin surface behind the automatic provider launch path. It keeps a provider TUI in a named tmux session and injects a fixed wake prompt when Synapse receives a directed message. It does not paste the Synapse payload into the terminal; the provider reads the inbox itself after waking.

  synapse codex-tmux start --identity myrepo/codex-main --session myrepo-codex --cwd "$PWD"
  synapse codex-tmux wait --identity myrepo/codex-main --session myrepo-codex --cwd "$PWD"
  

Agent ergonomics — the syn commands

For the short loop an agent runs every session — arm a waiter, send a message, read the inbox, glance at the board — the package also ships syn, a thin, identity-correct front end over the commands above:

syn name                          # resolve and print this terminal's identity
syn arm                           # keep a directed-only waiter armed (named <project>-rx, distinct from the sender)
syn say REMANENTIA,CEO "ack"      # send to one, several, or all
syn ask CEO "status?"             # send, require an online recipient, and wait for replies
syn inbox                         # print messages addressed to you since the cursor
syn board                         # the shared task/progress board
syn who --me                      # show whether this identity and its -rx waiter are online
syn reap                          # list this identity's shell-hook waiter pidfile
syn reap --pid 1234               # remove a dead pidfile or SIGTERM only the verified waiter PID
syn locks                         # list this project's active leases with release commands
syn ack BUILD --evidence "pytest -q" --artifact coverage.xml
syn commit README.md -m "document the change"

The one thing it gets right that a hand-rolled shell alias does not is identity. The project is resolved from --project, then $SYN_PROJECT (or $SYN_IDENTITY for a project/<type>-<id> multi-agent identity), and the working directory only as a last resort — so a command run from the wrong directory does not silently coordinate as the wrong project, and an identity that looks accidental (the home directory, a system path) is flagged rather than used in silence. Set $SYN_PROJECT once per terminal and the identity is stable across tool calls. The syn who --me shortcut dispatches to synapse who --me --name <resolved identity>; it reports the identity's presence separately from its -rx waiter because presence is not a wake loop.

syn-name/syn-wait/syn-say/syn-ask/syn-inbox/syn-board/syn-reap/syn-locks/syn-ack/syn-commit aliases are installed too. syn-wait is the agent wake primitive: it waits for a single directed message and then exits, so the surrounding harness — which re-invokes the agent when its background task ends — is actually woken. It defaults to --max-wakes 1 for exactly this reason, yet keeps the self-healing reconnect of syn arm, so a dropped connection or a hub restart re-arms transparently and only a real wake ends the wait. (syn arm itself stays persistently armed across many wakes, for an interactive terminal that reacts by other means.) Adding --mailbox to synapse arm also wakes the waiter on directed messages that arrived while it was disconnected — the reconnect or re-arm gap — by asking the hub to replay them on connect, resuming from a per-identity cursor under ~/synapse/mailbox-cursor/ so a re-arm is not replayed the whole backlog again (off by default; needs a wire version 2 hub). syn reap is the safe cleanup path for shell-hook waiter sidecars: it only inspects this resolved identity's pidfile, and it refuses to signal a PID unless the live command line verifies as that exact identity's synapse arm waiter. It never pattern-kills processes. syn locks queries the live state snapshot using the resolved identity and prints active leases for the project: holder, scope, age, remaining TTL, checkpoint/git context, and the explicit synapse release <task> --name <owner> command. syn ack <task> posts repeatable --evidence and --artifact values as an assessment progress note authored by the resolved identity, waits for the hub confirmation, then marks the board task done. synapse release can also attach a hub-echoed receipt with evidence, artifacts, changed files, generated artifacts, approvals, known failures, confidence, and evidence freshness. The receipt includes advisory epistemic_status metadata (supported, needs_freshness, stale, degraded, or unsupported) plus reasons derived from the submitted evidence; --receipt-json prints the receipt for automation, and the board records it as an assessment note. The syn commit workflow holds the project git lease, stages only the requested paths, and commits only those paths so unrelated staged or modified files stay out of the commit.

To make fresh terminals connect automatically, install the shell hook once:

synapse install-shell-hook --shell auto

New Bash/Fish/Zsh terminals then export SYN_PROJECT/SYN_IDENTITY and keep a cheap synapse arm sidecar running. The hook does not silently join whatever git checkout the terminal happens to start in. It joins the neutral SYNAPSE_DEFAULT_PROJECT lane, or user when unset, unless you explicitly set SYN_PROJECT/SYN_IDENTITY or opt a repository in with .synapse/project:

mkdir -p .synapse
printf '%s\n' myrepo > .synapse/project

For legacy CWD-derived behavior, set SYNAPSE_AUTO_PROJECT_FROM_CWD=1 in that terminal. The hook also wraps common provider commands (codex, claude, kimi, grok, gemini, agent, ask, ollama) through synapse worker-session, so cloud and local LLM sessions inherit the same Synapse identity from process start. In an interactive terminal, Codex/Claude/Kimi/Grok launch through a persistent tmux session and directed wake bridge automatically; the user still types only the provider command. Set SYNAPSE_PROVIDER_TMUX=0 to keep those providers on the direct execution path, or SYNAPSE_AUTO_CONNECT=0 to disable the hook for a terminal.

Durability

Passing --db backs the hub with an append-only SQLite event log (standard library, WAL mode). Every claim, release, task update, resource offer, and chat message is recorded, and the hub rebuilds its state by replaying the log on start-up. The guarantee is split honestly by workload: the lease/claim path commits at synchronous=FULL (durable across an OS crash); the high-volume chat/history path commits at synchronous=NORMAL (durable across an application crash, may lose the last commit on power loss).

Use synapse compact to bound the durable memory spine after every read-side consumer has advanced past a floor sequence. Add --archive-report when the maintenance run should leave an operator-readable HTML record of the pre-compaction event snapshot:

synapse compact ./synapse.db --all --max-checkpoints-per-task 3 \
  --archive-report ./compact-report.html

The report is written owner-only and includes event counts, the compaction floor, checkpoint/finding removal counts, board tasks, release receipt notes, and a bounded coordination timeline. It is an audit aid for a local event store; it does not certify that release evidence is sufficient.

SQLCipher live event store (at rest)

SQLCipher completes the at-rest encryption story for the live hub. The default install stays dependency-free and uses ordinary SQLite. When you need page-level confidentiality for the durable coordination log while the hub holds it open, install the optional extra and pass an owner-only key file:

python -m pip install 'synapse-channel[sqlcipher]'
synapse encrypt-key generate ~/synapse/hub.key
chmod 600 ~/synapse/hub.key

# New encrypted store (main DB + WAL stay ciphertext on disk):
synapse hub --db ~/synapse/hub.db --db-key-file ~/synapse/hub.key

# Plaintext → encrypted offline migration (hub stopped; destination must not exist):
synapse encrypt-key migrate-sqlcipher \
  --key ~/synapse/hub.key \
  --source ~/synapse/hub-plain.db \
  --destination ~/synapse/hub.db

# In-place key rotation via PRAGMA rekey (hub stopped):
synapse encrypt-key generate ~/synapse/hub.key.new
synapse sqlcipher rekey \
  --db ~/synapse/hub.db \
  --old-key ~/synapse/hub.key \
  --new-key ~/synapse/hub.key.new

Passphrase-derived keys (optional) tune scrypt cost on generation:

synapse encrypt-key generate --from-passphrase \
  --scrypt-n 65536 --scrypt-r 8 --scrypt-p 1 \
  ~/synapse/hub.key

Operators and analysis CLIs open the same store with the same key material — missing or wrong keys fail closed (no silent empty report):

synapse doctor --db-path ~/synapse/hub.db --db-key-file ~/synapse/hub.key
synapse event-query ~/synapse/hub.db --db-key-file ~/synapse/hub.key 'task T timeline'
synapse postmortem ~/synapse/hub.db --db-key-file ~/synapse/hub.key T
synapse reliability ~/synapse/hub.db --db-key-file ~/synapse/hub.key
synapse causality contention ~/synapse/hub.db --db-key-file ~/synapse/hub.key
synapse dashboard --feeds-db ~/synapse/hub.db --feeds-db-key-file ~/synapse/hub.key
synapse multihub observe --peer-db ~/peer/hub.db --db-key-file ~/peer/hub.key

Surface	What SQLCipher covers
Live hub	synapse hub --db … --db-key-file — page encryption for main DB + WAL while open
Doctor	synapse doctor --db-path … --db-key-file — verify the key opens the store
Readers / analysis	event-query, postmortem, merkle, causality, accounting, reliability, trust-graph, memory-recall, debug/reproduce, approval status, ttl-advice, workflow contention, participant costs, cross-repo --db, …
Operator UI	Dashboard store feeds via --feeds-db-key-file
Multi-hub / MCP	multihub observe --db-key-file; MCP tools take event_store_key_file for route observations and memory recall

Complementary whole-file envelopes (optional [encryption] extra) protect relay logs, A2A state files, cursors, and archives with AES-256-GCM via synapse encrypt-key profile|migrate|rekey|backup|restore. They do not replace page encryption for a live open SQLite database — that is SQLCipher's job.

Honest limits: SQLCipher does not protect hub RAM, does not replace filesystem permissions or connect authentication, and is not multi-tenant isolation. Stock installs without [sqlcipher] refuse --db-key-file with an install hint.

Full operator profile, key handling, and rotation: at-rest encryption.

Token-thrifty observation

--relay-log mirrors every broadcast to a newline-delimited file in a compact short-key form (encode_lite), so a token-budgeted agent can watch the channel by tailing a file instead of holding a socket. synapse relay <file> decodes it back to readable lines and can resume from a saved --cursor. The lite form keeps the seven core envelope fields and drops auxiliary ones; the file is bounded by --relay-max-lines. A committed benchmark measures the saving honestly — see benchmarks/.

Exposure

By default the hub binds to loopback and runs with no authentication — the right posture for one operator on one machine. When that is not enough (a worker with tool-use, or a hub bound off-loopback), --token requires a shared secret that connecting agents present with --token. Binding off loopback without a token is refused rather than silently exposed: the hub will not start unless you set a token (and --metrics-token when metrics are on), or explicitly pass --insecure-off-loopback to accept the risk. This is a proportionate gate, not a cryptographic identity system. For native wss://, pass both --tls-certfile and --tls-keyfile. TLS protects the transport but does not replace --token; an off-loopback hub still needs the shared secret unless you explicitly opt into --insecure-off-loopback.

MCP server face

Any MCP-compatible agent — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, an editor assistant — coordinates through Synapse with no Synapse-specific code. Install the optional extra and point the host at the command:

pip install 'synapse-channel[mcp]'
synapse mcp --uri ws://localhost:8876

synapse mcp runs a Model Context Protocol server over stdio that is itself a hub client, exposing the coordination verbs as MCP tools (claim, release, send, hand off, declare and update tasks) and the board, state, and manifest as live resources. It also exposes read-only MCP resource templates for a single board task, one agent, and one resource kind. The hub stays MCP-agnostic and the core install keeps its single dependency — see the MCP guide.

For Agent2Agent discovery, synapse a2a-card --endpoint-url ... projects the live capability manifest into an A2A Agent Card JSON document suitable for a thin HTTP edge to serve as /.well-known/agent-card.json. synapse a2a-conformance prints the local support matrix against the A2A 1.0.0 operation model so supported, partial, unsupported, and external rows are visible from the installed package. Capability cards can also carry declarative capability contracts: per-task-class input_schema and output_schema mappings plus optional preconditions and postconditions. These contracts are discovery metadata for routing and review; they do not grant executable trust or certify that a remote peer conforms. synapse directory joins the live capability manifest with resource offers into a discovery-only capability directory for agents and tools. Directory entries are routing hints and review evidence only; they do not reserve capacity, authorize execution, or certify agent/tool trust.

Official Go client

clients/go/synapse provides the official Go client for read-only ops and CI tools. It fetches HTTP JSON surfaces such as synapse dashboard /snapshot.json through DashboardSnapshot or GetJSON, with optional bearer authentication for dashboard tokens on exposed HTTP surfaces. It does not implement the WebSocket mutation protocol for claims, chat, board writes, release receipts, or presence. See the Go client guide.

Official TypeScript/JavaScript client

clients/js provides the official typed WebSocket client, published to npm as @anulum/synapse-channel. Unlike the read-only Go client it speaks the mutation protocol — chat, claims, releases, board reads, presence, and receipts — and runs unchanged in the browser and in Node 20+ with no runtime dependencies. See the TypeScript/JavaScript client guide.

synapse route-task TASK-1 uses that live directory plus the shared board to rank candidate agents with deterministic local signals. With --event-store ./synapse.db, it also uses positive release-receipt assessment notes as observed evidence and keeps each matched signal tied to its source task and durable event sequence. The recommendation is advisory only: it does not claim work, mutate the board, reserve resources, grade agents, or turn a capability card into executable trust. synapse resource-bids TASK-1 uses the same live directory and board task to rank resource offers with deterministic local reasons: resource kind, capacity, provider task-class/skill matches, description overlap, resource-name overlap, and matching metadata. It is an advisory marketplace-style view only; it does not reserve capacity, authorize execution, mutate the board, or certify provider trust. synapse memory-recall ./synapse.db "query" provides the first product slice of provenance-preserving memory recall. It reads only the local SQLite event store, projects findings, checkpoints, and handoffs into deterministic token matches, and returns the source sequence, event kind, task id, actor, and matched tokens. It does not create external embeddings, contact a service, certify truth, or mutate hub state. To run that edge directly, use synapse a2a-serve --endpoint-url ...; it serves the public Agent Card, forwards POST /message:send text/data/file parts into SYNAPSE chat, supports immediate POST /message:stream Server-Sent Events, exposes bridge-local task list/get/cancel plus push-notification configuration routes, accepts JSON-RPC 2.0 calls on /rpc, and can enforce Bearer auth plus request size/depth bounds, persist task state with --state-file, fail stale open tasks with --task-timeout, and bound one subscription wait with --subscribe-timeout. Task correlation is carried in structured SYNAPSE chat metadata (a2aTaskId and a2aContextId); the bridge does not append or trust inline markers in chat text, so user-authored message bodies stay data rather than task selectors. The bridge is intentionally a local-first HTTP+JSON edge: it stores bridge task state locally in owner-only state/temp files, rejects unsafe caller ids and webhook targets including delivery-time DNS or redirect targets that resolve to local networks, bounds stored tasks/history/artifacts/push configs/replay history with terminal-task retention GC, emits subscription replay only from the current bridge process, and does not claim independent A2A conformance until remote CI, interoperability, remote public webhook receiver validation, and operator deployment sign-off have run. That independent validation runs as a community track of reproducible validation receipts — discovery, task lifecycle, webhook, proxy/TLS, replay, and threat-model — rather than a single pass/fail. The installed support matrix is available with synapse a2a-conformance and in the A2A conformance matrix; exposed deployments should also follow the A2A deployment threat model.

Git-native claims

A claim can be scoped to the git branch it happens on, resolved client-side:

synapse git-init                                 # one-step setup: install the hooks + write a .synapse/ guide
synapse git-claim TASK-1 --paths src/auth.py     # or: synapse git-claim --task-id TASK-1 ...
synapse git-hook install                         # (git-init already does this) auto-release on commit/merge
synapse conflicts --check-diff                   # predict cross-branch merge conflicts

The planned policy engine builds on git-native claims, release receipts, and event-log evidence so teams can evaluate required tests, strict type checking, owner approval, evidence freshness, generated artifact parity, and no-merge-without-receipt rules before turning any advisory output into a local hook or CI gate.

synapse hub --team-secure is the multi-seat trust profile: connect token, identity binding, role-claim grants, and private directed messages in one switch (loopback multi-agent fleets). synapse hub --paranoid enforces a strict production hub profile and prints an explicit missing-hook checklist: token-required hub access, durable event logs, per-message authentication for selected mutating frames, ACL + native WSS, metrics bearer-token auth, disabled metrics query tokens, and clear remaining gaps. The two compose for multi-seat + exposed binds.

At-rest encryption is implemented in two complementary layers: SQLCipher page encryption for the live hub event store (hub --db-key-file, migrate/rekey-sqlcipher, analysis and doctor readers — see SQLCipher live event store), and whole-file AES-256-GCM envelopes for relay logs, A2A state, cursors, and archives (synapse encrypt-key profile/migrate/rekey/backup/restore, optional passphrase / PKCS#11 / TPM2 / cloud-HSM key wrapping, threshold escrow, and hardware attestation gates). Both are opt-in extras; neither claims RAM protection or multi-tenant isolation.

The end-to-end encrypted channels runtime encrypts selected chat payloads with synapse send --encrypt-key-file and decrypts them locally with synapse listen --decrypt-key-file, while the broader profile for private progress notes, handoff checkpoints, A2A artifacts, key discovery, and rotation remains explicit follow-on work.

The private channels runtime scopes chat delivery to explicit channel members, keeps a bounded member-only live history, mirrors channel-tagged relay events for filtered export, and supports metadata-only event-query channel filters. It does not encrypt payloads or create cryptographic identity.

The planned differential-privacy blackboard profile scopes redacted and noisy shared blackboard projections for multi-organisation views. It is not implemented yet, keeps raw local board data exact for the operator, and does not encrypt payloads, replace private channels, replace end-to-end encrypted channels, anonymize raw logs, or authorize board writes.

The planned signed events and mTLS profile scopes event signatures, key rotation, replay protection, verification results, trust bundles, certificate pinning, and trusted multi-host peers. It is not implemented yet, does not encrypt payloads, does not replace per-agent identity, and does not certify external federation.

The per-message authentication runtime enforces opt-in HMAC-SHA256 authentication for selected mutating WebSocket frames after connect authentication. It defines canonical frames, key ids, sender-bound CLI keys, nonces, signed sequence metadata, timestamp windows, bounded in-memory replay cache behavior, key rotation, revocation results, and verification results without claiming payload encryption, public-key signatures, signed events, or identity enforcement.

The planned identity and ACL profile scopes per-agent identity, identity-bound credentials, project namespaces, allowed verbs, target patterns, metrics/A2A/dashboard/release privileges, deny-by-default authorization, credential rotation, revocation, and migration from shared-token mode without claiming runtime enforcement today.

The planned signed capability cards profile scopes tamper-evident capability advertisements for manifests, directories, dashboards, MCP resources, and A2A Agent Card projections. It is not implemented yet, keeps unsigned local cards as advisory discovery, and does not authorize tools, replace per-message authentication, replace signed events, or sandbox agents.

synapse git-init bundles the hook install with a short .synapse/git-claims.md onboarding guide (branch convention + worktree workflow). synapse state shows each claim's branch; installed git hooks release a claim when its files are committed or merged; and synapse conflicts flags two agents about to edit the same files on branches that merge into the same base. --check-diff narrows directory or whole-worktree claims to files both branches actually changed when both branch diffs are available. The hub stays git-agnostic — it stores the branch as opaque metadata and never runs git or reads a filesystem — so all git work is on the client. See the git-native claims guide.

For a concise lease view while coordinating a session:

syn locks              # current project only
syn locks --all        # every active lease
syn locks --owner api  # one owner or project namespace

When a manual release is also the closeout record, attach the evidence directly:

synapse release BUILD --name api-dev \
  --evidence "pytest tests/test_feature.py -q: passed" \
  --changed-file src/synapse_channel/feature.py \
  --artifact coverage.xml \
  --receipt-json

When closeout evidence should be observed rather than hand-entered, synapse verify-release runs declared commands, records exit codes and stdout/stderr SHA-256 digests, hashes named artifacts, captures Git HEAD, tree, and changed files, then writes receipt JSON for synapse release --receipt:

synapse verify-release BUILD --name api-dev \
  --run ".venv/bin/python -m pytest tests/test_feature.py -q" \
  --artifact coverage.xml \
  --output verified-release.json
synapse release BUILD --name api-dev --receipt verified-release.json --receipt-json

The resulting supported status remains advisory: it describes fresh submitted evidence, not independent proof that the checks or artifacts are sufficient.

For safer task selection and release receipts, the local test ownership map connects source files to likely owning tests using AST imports plus a conservative filename fallback:

python tools/test_ownership_map.py --check \
  --source src/synapse_channel/core/receipts.py \
  --require-owned src/synapse_channel/core/receipts.py

It is a deterministic local aid for choosing focused tests; it does not replace review, coverage, or the release receipt evidence itself.

When a source change can stale generated outputs, ask the generated-output dependency map which generated paths should be included in the same claim:

python tools/generated_dependency_claims.py --claim-args \
  --source src/synapse_channel/core/receipts.py

The command prints --paths ... arguments for synapse git-claim and can also emit JSON for release tooling. It is a deterministic coordination aid; the owning generator, such as python tools/capability_manifest.py --check, remains the freshness check for the generated artefact itself.

For semantic task scopes, resolve modules, public symbols, API surfaces, tests, generated artefacts, migrations, or source paths into ordinary claim paths:

python tools/semantic_claims.py --selector \
  symbol:synapse_channel.core.receipts.build_release_receipt \
  --claim-args

The semantic claim resolver prints the source file, likely owning tests, and generated outputs that should share the same file-scope claim. It keeps the hub path-scope and local-first while giving agents a deterministic semantic planning step before they call synapse git-claim.

For daily claims, synapse git-claim can resolve the same selectors directly:

synapse git-claim TASK-RECEIPTS \
  --symbol synapse_channel.core.receipts.build_release_receipt \
  --semantic-evidence-json semantic-evidence.json

The command resolves the current git root locally, expands the selector into ordinary claim paths, and writes receipt-ready selector evidence when requested. The hub still receives only file-scope paths.

Before merge or handoff, the import graph merge-risk radar compares changed files with claimed paths, package-local Python import neighbours, CODEOWNERS, and mapped test owners:

python tools/import_merge_risk.py --changed src/synapse_channel/core/receipts.py \
  --claimed src/synapse_channel/core/state.py --check

Use --base main --head HEAD instead of --changed to read a local branch diff, or --claims-json claims.json to feed paths from an external claim snapshot. The radar is an advisory local planning check; it predicts likely contention but does not replace tests, review, or release receipt evidence.

For post-hoc coordination forensics, query the durable event log directly:

synapse event-query ./synapse.db "task TASK-1 timeline"
synapse event-query ./synapse.db "task TASK-1 at seq 120" --json
synapse event-query ./synapse.db "path src/auth.py between 0 9999999999"
synapse event-query ./synapse.db "conflicts at seq 120"
synapse event-query ./synapse.db 'timeline("TASK-1").'
synapse event-query ./synapse.db 'MATCH (task:TASK {id:"TASK-1"}) RETURN timeline'
synapse postmortem ./synapse.db TASK-1
synapse debug ./synapse.db --fork-at 142 --set status=blocked
synapse reproduce ./synapse.db TASK-1 --expect 9f2c…
synapse causality causes ./synapse.db 142
synapse causality causes ./hub.db peer:96 --peer peer=./peer-hub.db
synapse merkle root ./synapse.db
synapse reliability ./synapse.db
synapse accounting report ./synapse.db --pricing pricing.json --budget budget.json
synapse approval request --name dev --subject TASK-1 --reason "needs sign-off"
synapse approval status ./synapse.db --pending
synapse ttl-advice ./synapse.db

This temporal event-log query path is read-only. It reconstructs task timelines, task state at a sequence or timestamp, path-touch windows, and historical file-scope conflicts from the SQLite event store created by synapse hub --db. The Datalog-like and Cypher-like examples are prototype aliases for the same small query model, not a separate graph database or mutable policy engine.

Use synapse postmortem ./synapse.db TASK-1 when a task needs a replayable postmortem for a handover or incident note. The report includes the durable task timeline, owners, releases, assessment evidence, reconstructed path-overlap conflicts, and candidate unanswered messages. Candidate unanswered messages mean the log contains a directed chat mentioning the task id and no later matching chat reply; it is an audit signal, not proof of intent.

Use synapse debug ./synapse.db --fork-at 142 to rewind a task in the log and inspect a what-if. It reconstructs the exact claim state — owner, status, paths, and the saved resume checkpoint — that the task held at that sequence, then prints the resume manifest an agent would pick up from there (with --set FIELD=VALUE overriding a resume field) next to the events that really followed. The hub runs no task, so this is read-only inspection, not re-execution; it exits 1 when the task held no live claim at that point.

Use synapse reproduce ./synapse.db TASK-1 to fingerprint a task's authoritative history into a portable SHA-256 digest. Hub state is a pure fold of an append-only log, so the same claim snapshots and releases replay to the same digest on every machine; --expect DIGEST turns it into a gate that fails on any divergence, the way a release receipt is verified.

Use synapse causality causes ./synapse.db 142 to trace coordination causality over the log. It folds the durable events into a directed acyclic graph of three recorded relations — a task's own lifecycle, a declared depends_on satisfied by the dependency's completion, and a release that let a later, path-overlapping claim proceed — and answers against an event sequence: causes for what preceded it, effects for what it enabled, and counterfactual for the downstream events that would lose their recorded cause without it. This is coordination causality inferred from recorded scheduling semantics, not statistical causal discovery; every edge is backed by a concrete event, and the counterfactual is a structural what-if over the inferred graph. With --peer HUB=PATH the same queries trace causality across federated hubs: the logs merge in the deterministic multi-hub order, events are addressed as HUB:SEQ, and an edge whose endpoints two different hubs authored is tagged federation — clock-ordered evidence, since hubs share no sequence, and observe-only like the multi-hub read side; --clock-skew HUB=SECONDS annotates offline federated reports with measured local-minus-peer skew warnings, and --dot renders the federated answer as a Graphviz digraph, one cluster per hub with federation edges coloured, so the cross-hub topology is visible at a glance. synapse causality otel projects the graph onto OpenTelemetry spans — one trace per task, cross-task dependency/contention edges as span links, ids deterministic — written as JSON (--out) or pushed as real OTLP over HTTP (--endpoint, optional extra: pip install 'synapse-channel[otel]'); --service-name distinguishes hubs sharing one observability tenant, --filter TASK_ID narrows the projection to named tasks without truncating their cross-task links, an event recording the lifecycle failure terminal projects span status ERROR, and --watch re-exports on a fixed cadence — idempotent collector-side thanks to the deterministic ids. synapse causality health walks the same graph and flags orphaned claims (claimed, then silence), declared dependencies that never completed, and unreleased claims silent past a threshold — ages measured against the log's own final timestamp, deterministic and replayable; exit 1 signals an anomaly.

Use synapse merkle root ./synapse.db to commit the durable log to a single Merkle root — a 32-byte fingerprint of every event, so two operators or two federated hubs holding the same log derive the same root and a mismatch proves they differ. synapse merkle prove ./synapse.db 142 emits an O(log n) inclusion proof for one event, and synapse merkle verify proof.json checks that proof offline against a trusted root with no event store — the light-client verification a follower runs. The tree follows RFC 6962 (Certificate Transparency), so a leaf hash cannot be forged as an interior node. It commits what the log contains — integrity and inclusion — complementing reproduce (a per-task digest) with a log-wide, incrementally provable commitment.

Use synapse reliability ./synapse.db for evidence-only reliability memory. It tracks stale claims, declared failed-check evidence, broken handoff candidates, and merge-conflict frequency as audit signals, not scores. It does not rank agents, assign trust grades, or replace review of the underlying event rows.

Use synapse accounting for opt-in model cost/token usage. Synapse never calls a model provider and collects no telemetry, so usage exists only when you record it: synapse accounting record posts a usage-kind progress note, and synapse accounting report ./synapse.db aggregates those notes into per-agent and per-model totals, with optional --pricing for cost estimates and --budget for budget evidence. Budgets are evidence, not an enforcement gate.

Use synapse approval for human-in-the-loop approval gates on held tasks or policy-gated releases. synapse approval request puts a subject in awaiting_approval, synapse approval decide --approve|--reject records the decision, and synapse approval status ./synapse.db replays the notes into the current state per subject (the latest event wins, so a re-request re-opens the gate). It is advisory evidence and an audit trail, not a hard runtime gate; an approved subject can be cited in a release receipt via synapse release --approval.

The agent trust graph connects those reliability signals, positive release receipts, handoff outcomes, and conflict history into an inspectable evidence graph: synapse trust-graph ./synapse.db prints typed evidence edges with event-log provenance, filtered by --agent, --task, or a --since decay window, as text, JSON, or Graphviz DOT. It does not rank agents, assign trust grades, authorize execution, replace code review, or replace identity and ACL; the routing integration and the owner-annotation workflow remain design targets.

The planned federated trust model profile designs how independent operator-managed domains could peer — out-of-band, deny-by-default bundle exchange composing identity, signed events, mutual TLS, ACLs, and receipts across a domain boundary. It is not implemented yet, is not a certificate authority, and does not change the local-first default.

The Agent Air Traffic Control architecture names how the shipped parts compose into one control loop — separation (claims), merge-risk radar (conflicts), evidence-gated completion (receipts, policy-check, approval), post-incident replay (postmortem, reliability), and memory (the ingest seam). It is an architecture, not a scheduler: only claims gate a mutation, and everything else is read-only or advisory.

The planned cross-agent adapter kits design specifies a synapse adapters step that detects installed coding tools (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Aider, Copilot) and writes a thin claim-aware adapter into each tool's native config, plus thin client shims for Python frameworks. Adapters carry only "claim before edit, release on commit, reach the hub" — Synapse stays persona-neutral and adds no new coordination primitive.

The multi-hub sync (CRDT) research asks whether several hubs could synchronise state while keeping claim safety and local-first. Its honest core: most state (the append-only event log, presence, progress) merges conflict-free, but claims are mutual exclusion and not a CRDT — they are routed by single-owner-per-namespace and fail closed on a partition. The shipped surface is operator-managed peering: synapse multihub follow and --observed-peer HUB=URI views observe peer logs as advisory observed@HUB state; local claim authority remains local or explicitly routed to the owning hub. Network observed-peer pulls also carry cursor lag and peer welcome-frame clock skew, so operators can see when timestamp-ordered cross-hub evidence depends on clocks outside their configured agreement.

The sandboxed tools and marketplace research asks what it would take to run untrusted tool code safely — a capability-limited WebAssembly sandbox (deny-by-default filesystem, network, and resources) — and only then a marketplace built on signed capability cards, an explicit permission manifest, and run receipts. No untrusted code runs without the sandbox, and no executable marketplace ships before all the preconditions exist. The sandbox itself ships today behind the optional [wasm] extra; the WASM sandbox getting-started guide walks an operator from a tool's source through validate, test, and run. The marketplace remains a boundary specification — local-first and deny-by-default throughout.

The managed GitHub App design pins the boundary for hosted cross-PR conflict prediction: the prediction itself reuses the existing local-core conflict finder, while everything that makes it managed — webhooks, GitHub auth, checks API, hosting — stays out of the local core. Advisory only, not implemented, and gated on a local adoption signal.

Use synapse ttl-advice ./synapse.db for read-only adaptive lease TTL advice. It derives completed-task duration samples, active live-claim counts, and stale claim counts from the event log, then prints an advisory default. It never changes the hub default and explicit manual TTL values still win.

Coordination model

1. Claim before you work: an agent leases a task by id; a live lease blocks other agents from claiming the same task.
2. Declare a file scope on the claim (a worktree and paths); the hub refuses a claim whose files overlap another agent's live claim — this is how two agents are kept off the same files. Agents in different worktrees never contend.
3. Leases auto-expire, so a crashed agent never holds a claim forever, and each lease carries an epoch so a superseded agent cannot act on a dead claim. An owner can save a durable checkpoint on the task; if its lease lapses, the next agent to claim the task inherits that checkpoint and resumes rather than restarting.
4. Release on completion; status and an optional artefact reference can be attached while the task is in progress. A held task can also be handed off atomically to another online agent — keeping its scope, status, and context, with no window for a third agent to grab it mid-transfer.
5. Presence, who, full state snapshots, and chat history are queryable at any time. After a reconnect to the same running hub, an agent can resume by idem_key (retried claims are not applied twice while the hub retains its idempotency cache) and a resume cursor (fetch exactly the messages it missed).

Alongside the lease registry, a shared blackboard holds the team's plan: a task ledger of declared work with dependencies (the hub refuses dependency cycles, so ready tasks are well-defined) and an append-only progress ledger a supervisor can read to spot stalls. A declared LedgerTask is the plan; a claim is the lease on doing it — the two share a task id but stay independent, so the simple claim flow keeps working. The hub keeps the progress view bounded globally, per author, and per task id (--max-progress, --max-progress-per-author, --max-progress-per-task), while the durable event log remains append-only until explicit compaction. Durable findings also have a per-agent admission cap (--max-findings-per-agent) so one producer cannot fill the shared memory spine. View the board with synapse board.

synapse supervisor remains deterministic and LLM-free. It re-offers in_progress tasks after the fixed --idle-seconds ceiling, and, by default, can lower that ceiling when completed-task progress cadence in the same board shows a faster local pattern. Use --no-predictive-stall to disable the historical-cadence supplement; it is an advisory local board heuristic, not a guarantee that work is actually abandoned.

See TEAM_PROTOCOL.md for the working agreement and message reference.

Why not just git worktrees?

Worktrees are a good tool and SYNAPSE composes with them rather than competing: a claim declares its worktree, and agents in different worktrees never contend on files. But worktrees alone solve only file isolation, and they solve it by deferring the collision to merge time. What they do not give you:

• Work deduplication — two agents in two worktrees can happily build the same feature twice; a claimed task on the shared board cannot be claimed again while its lease is live.
• Real-time conflict refusal — inside one worktree (the common case for a shared checkout), the hub refuses an overlapping file-scope claim before the second agent edits, instead of surfacing the damage as a merge conflict hours later.
• Visibility — presence, live claims, a task board with dependencies, and progress you can query, instead of discovering what each agent did from its branch diff.
• Continuity — leases expire, checkpoints survive crashes, tasks hand off atomically; a worktree left behind by a dead agent is just a stale directory.
• A durable record — an append-only event log of who claimed, did, and released what, replayable after an incident (synapse causality, synapse debug), which no branch topology records.

If per-agent worktrees already work for you, keep them — and let the hub carry the claims, the plan, and the audit trail across them.

Library use

import asyncio
from synapse_channel import SynapseHub, SynapseAgent

async def main() -> None:
    hub = SynapseHub()
    asyncio.create_task(hub.serve("localhost", 8876))
    agent = SynapseAgent("ALPHA", uri="ws://localhost:8876")
    # ... drive the agent: claim, chat, request state ...

Two self-contained, runnable demos live in examples/: coordination_demo.py narrates a full task through the bus (declare, block, claim, refuse an overlap, unblock, hand off), and llm_team_demo.py asks an on-channel model worker a question. Each starts its own in-process hub, so python examples/coordination_demo.py runs with nothing else set up.

Architecture

Module	Responsibility
state	Presence, scoped task-claim leases, epochs/versions, and resource offers (transport-agnostic).
ledger	Shared blackboard: the declared task plan (with dependencies) and a bounded progress stream.
scoping	Worktree- and path-overlap detection that keeps two agents off the same files.
lifecycle	Typed task-status states and the legal transitions the hub enforces.
deadlock	Wait-for cycle detection so circular hold-and-wait claims are refused.
protocol	The on-wire message envelope and message-type constants.
relay	Lite/heavy codec (encode_lite/decode_lite) and append-only NDJSON log helpers for file-based observers.
archive_report	Static HTML archive reports for compacted event-store history and release receipt notes.
hub	The routing core: connections, names, history, broadcast.
client	The reusable async agent connection and coordination helpers.
persistence	Append-only SQLite event store (WAL) giving the hub a crash-durable spine.
journal	Records mutations as events and replays them to rebuild state on restart.
ratelimit	Per-agent and per-host token-bucket limiters, plus per-host connection caps, so one runaway source cannot swamp the hub.
auth	Optional shared-secret connect token (proportionate, not a cryptographic identity).
chat_backends	Pluggable reply backends (OpenAI-compatible HTTP, rule-based).
routing	Classify a request into a task class and route it to a tiered backend.
llm_worker	An on-channel agent that answers addressed messages via a backend.
stall	Deterministic fixed-threshold and historical-cadence stall policy.
supervisor	LLM-free watcher that spots stalled plan tasks and re-offers them.
capability	Agent capability cards (A2A-shaped) and the hub-aggregated manifest.
capability_contracts	Declarative input/output capability contracts carried by manifest cards.
capability_directory	Discovery-only directory joining capability cards and resource offers.
semantic_routing	Advisory local task-to-agent recommendations over board tasks and capability cards.
capability_observations	Provenance-preserving observed release-receipt evidence for advisory routing.
resource_bidding	Advisory resource-offer bids over the live capability directory.
memory_projection	Deterministic local recall over durable findings, checkpoints, and handoffs.
launcher	One-command local hub + worker startup.
cli	The unified synapse command.

Capability inventory

Module and surface inventory — counts kept in sync with the source tree by CI.

SYNAPSE CHANNEL capability inventory

Surface	Current inventory
Package version	0.98.27
Public API exports	70
Package modules	354
Classes	516
Wire message types	73
CLI subcommands	158
Test functions	5811
Benchmark harnesses	6
Documentation pages	53
GitHub Actions workflows	12
Optional-dependency groups	12

This snapshot is a static inventory generated from the source tree. Performance and coverage claims have their own committed evidence — see VALIDATION.md and benchmarks/.

Documentation and project

• New here? Use cases · How it compares · FAQ · Troubleshooting · Glossary
• ARCHITECTURE.md — the module map and coordination model.
• TEAM_PROTOCOL.md — the working agreement and wire reference.
• VALIDATION.md — how it is tested and the gates a change clears.
• CONTRIBUTING.md · SECURITY.md · GOVERNANCE.md · ROADMAP.md
• Full documentation site: https://anulum.github.io/synapse-channel

Security posture

Local-first by default: the hub binds to loopback, and it refuses a non-loopback bind unless a token is configured (or the operator explicitly accepts the exposure with --insecure-off-loopback). When a deployment crosses that boundary, every control is opt-in and deny-by-default:

• Connect authentication — a shared-secret token compared in constant time (--token-file or SYNAPSE_TOKEN preferred over --token, which is visible in the process list).
• Per-message authentication — --require-message-auth demands authentication on selected mutating frames, with an Ed25519 event-signature trust bundle and mTLS certificate pins for multi-hub pulls and federation peerings; an unresolvable or unpinnable peer is denied, never handled locally.
• Deny-by-default ACL — --acl-policy with --require-acl rejects mutating frames from identities the policy does not grant.
• Bounded resources — connection, frame-size, JSON-depth, rate, and history caps keep one runaway agent from exhausting the hub.
• One-flag strict mode — synapse hub --paranoid turns the strict set on together.

Beyond the wire, several subsystems harden data at rest and privileged actions, each opt-in and documented:

• At-rest encryption (complete dual profile) —
  • SQLCipher — optional page encryption for the live hub event store (pip install 'synapse-channel[sqlcipher]', synapse hub --db-key-file, migrate/rekey-sqlcipher, doctor and analysis readers with the same key). Completes the story for a database that stays open under WAL. See SQLCipher live event store.
  • Whole-file AES-256-GCM envelopes — relay logs, A2A state, cursors, and archives via synapse encrypt-key, with fail-safe profile checks, migrate/ rekey/backup/restore, and optional passphrase / PKCS#11 / TPM 2.0 key wrapping ([encryption] extra). See at-rest encryption.
• Capability-limited tool sandbox — synapse sandbox runs a WebAssembly tool under a deny-by-default capability manifest (filesystem, network, and resource grants bound to the module's content digest), refuses a preopen whose host path resolves through a symlink, and returns a bounded, attestable run receipt. Experimental, behind the optional [wasm] extra. See WASM sandbox.
• Governed cross-hub relay — a cross-hub force-release requires a reason, is tagged when it is break-glass, and can require two distinct operators (opt-in two-person approval) before it applies.
• Durable auto-action arming — which automatic actions a hub may take is an explicit, operator-managed policy persisted across restarts, not a per-session default.

The supply chain is gated the same way: a gitleaks pre-commit hook on staged changes plus a digest-pinned full-tree gitleaks sweep in CI; a hash-locked CI toolchain (uv-compiled with --generate-hashes, installed with --require-hashes) with GitHub Actions pinned to full commit SHAs and Docker base images pinned to digests; and pip-audit on every push alongside the CodeQL and OpenSSF Scorecard workflows. The threat model and how to report a vulnerability are in SECURITY.md.

Known limitations

• Single hub, single machine. There is no built-in failover or horizontal scale; the hub is one process and the design is deliberately local-first. A hub restart resumes from the durable log, but it is not a high-availability cluster.
• Connect authentication is a proportionate shared secret, not a cryptographic identity system. Opt-in per-message authentication, Ed25519 event-signature trust, mTLS certificate pins, and a deny-by-default ACL policy exist for exposed or multi-hub deployments (see Security posture), but every peering is an out-of-band trust decision — bundle bytes can move over the wire (synapse federation offer/fetch, fingerprint-compared, never trust-on-first-use), yet there is no automatic trust distribution — and an agent's identity is a declared name, not a per-agent credential. Do not expose the hub on an untrusted network and rely on the token alone.
• Graceful shutdown is bounded, not transactional. SIGTERM/SIGINT stop accepting new sockets, close active WebSocket sessions within --shutdown-close-timeout, and rely on per-mutation persistence for durable state already accepted by the hub.
• Takeover is a local recovery tool, not authentication. The hub rate-limits repeated takeovers with --takeover-cooldown and logs takeover/conflict outcomes with sender, remote host, and close reason, but agents remain trusted local processes.
• Agents are trusted. The bus coordinates agents; it does not sandbox them. An agent is trusted to the extent the operator trusts the process it runs in.
• Task-class routing is heuristic. The classifier sorts a request by length and a keyword set; tune the thresholds for your workload. Per-tier model latency is not benchmarked offline (it needs a live model server).
• File-scope claims are advisory, not filesystem access. The hub never reads a filesystem; a claim's paths are opaque strings compared only for overlap. Normal relative paths stay narrow, while absolute or traversal-like declarations such as ../../etc/passwd widen to the whole worktree so they cannot underclaim and miss a conflict. They do not grant filesystem access. See SECURITY.md.
• Metrics are opt-in and off by default. synapse hub --metrics exposes a Prometheus /metrics and a JSON /health endpoint on the hub's port; without the flag the hub serves no HTTP. The endpoint carries operational metadata, so keep it on a loopback bind, or require --metrics-token before exposing it. The header form, Authorization: Bearer <token>, is the default token presentation. The query-string form ?token=<token> is disabled by default and is accepted only with --metrics-query-token-ok, because query tokens leak easily into logs and history. The live board, state, and manifest also remain available over the CLI and the MCP resources.
• synapse --version is network-silent by default. Set SYNAPSE_UPDATE_CHECK=1 to opt in to a best-effort PyPI newer-release check (once a day, cached, no payload beyond the request itself). Set SYNAPSE_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1 to suppress the check even when opt-in is present.

Commercial use

SYNAPSE CHANNEL is dual-licensed, and there is no feature difference between the open-source and the commercial build — the package on PyPI is the full product. A commercial licence changes the terms, not the code. You can run the whole platform yourself, forever, at no cost; the paid layers add permission, hosting, support, and convenience on top of the free core, and nothing is ever moved behind a paywall.

• Use it free under the AGPL-3.0 for open-source, research, internal, or personal work — including inside a company — as long as you do not expose a closed-source or hosted derivative over a network to third parties.
• Buy a commercial licence to ship a closed-source product or a SaaS without the AGPL's network-copyleft obligation — the same code, under your own terms.

Layer	For	What you add
Community — free (AGPL-3.0)	self-hosting, research, personal, internal	the whole platform, unlimited; copyleft applies
Commercial Licence	an org whose policy or product cannot use AGPL	the right to use and embed it without the AGPL copyleft — same code, different terms, with a signed certificate
Pro	an individual or small team depending on it daily	priority support and the published mobile app with push (the self-hosted cockpit stays free)
Team	a team owning a shared fleet	a managed observability dashboard (your hubs and data stay local), priority security patches, and named support
Business / Enterprise	regulated or multi-organisation deployments	an SLA with indemnification, audit exports, a managed federation gateway, and SSO

Plans and checkout are at anulum.li/synapse/pricing.html (Polar.sh, USD; each buyer sees their local currency at checkout, CHF invoicing on request). For enterprise, OEM, academic, non-profit, managed-hosting, or co-ownership terms, write to [e-mail] with the evaluation details listed in docs/commercial.md. The full terms are in COMMERCIAL-LICENSE.md.

How to cite

If you use SYNAPSE CHANNEL in your work, please cite it. Metadata is in CITATION.cff; a BibTeX entry:

@software{sotek_synapse_channel,
  author  = {Šotek, Miroslav},
  title   = {SYNAPSE CHANNEL: Local-first multi-agent coordination bus},
  url      = {https://github.com/anulum/synapse-channel},
  doi      = {10.5281/zenodo.20801559},
  version = {0.98.27},
  year     = {2026}
}

Licence

Dual-licensed: AGPL-3.0-or-later, with a commercial licence available — see Commercial use for the plans and pricing. LICENSE holds the full AGPL text, COMMERCIAL-LICENSE.md the commercial terms, and NOTICE.md the licensing boundary. The repository is REUSE 3.x compliant.

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© 1998–2026 Miroslav Šotek · anulum.li · [e-mail]