threadkeeper 0.8.0

Multi-agent shared brain across Claude Code/Desktop, Codex, Gemini, Copilot, VS Code. Cross-session memory, self-improving skill loops, inter-agent signaling — one local MCP server.

thread-keeper

Multi-agent shared brain across Claude Code/Desktop, Codex, Gemini, Copilot, and VS Code. Cross-session memory, self-improving skill loops, and inter-agent signaling — one local MCP server turns parallel agent instances into a coordinated multi-agent system instead of N isolated chats.

Every connected client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex CLI + desktop, Gemini, Copilot, every MCP-aware VS Code extension) shares one SQLite store, one set of threads, one user model, and one learning loop that improves the skill library autonomously over time.

The brief format is dense — structural tags, opaque IDs, ~6 KB per session-start injection. Optimized for agent consumption, not human reading.

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Why

Every agent CLI starts cold. Context dies at session boundaries. Skills you taught Claude don't transfer to Codex. Threads you closed in yesterday's Gemini chat are invisible to today's Copilot. Parallel agent instances running the same task don't know about each other and duplicate work or step on each other's writes.

thread-keeper is the substrate underneath. Three things that together make it more than a memory store:

• Collective memory — threads, notes, verbatim quotes, dialectic claims about you. Survives session, restart, CLI swap. One agent records, every other agent (any CLI) reads. The brief injected at session start gives a new agent everything the previous one knew.
• Multi-agent coordination — spawn primitive launches child agents in parallel, each gets a self_cid + sees the same memory. broadcast / whisper / inbox / wait / ask / respond let concurrent sessions signal each other across CLIs. Parent / children / sibling agents become a coordinated swarm, not isolated chats.
• Self-improving skill library — five autonomous background loops (auto-review on thread close, shadow-review daemon, extract harvester, candidate-reviewer, weekly Curator) materialize class-level skills as the agents work. Adapted to multi-CLI: SKILL.md is the primary write target and gets mirrored to every known/configured skills root simultaneously (~/.claude/skills/, ~/.codex/skills/, existing ~/.agents/skills/, extra roots from THREADKEEPER_EXTRA_SKILLS_DIRS, and ~/.threadkeeper/skills/), with lessons.md as a fallback for CLIs without a native skills loader.

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Quickstart

The shortest path — PyPI + pipx (recommended):

pipx install 'threadkeeper[semantic]' && thread-keeper-setup

thread-keeper-setup detects every CLI you have installed (Claude Code / Claude Desktop / Codex CLI + desktop / Gemini / Copilot / VS Code), registers the MCP server in each one's config, copies hooks to ~/.threadkeeper/hooks/, and writes a managed instructions block into each CLI's per-user instructions file (CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md / GEMINI.md / copilot-instructions.md — Claude Desktop and VS Code have no global instructions file, so that step is skipped for them).

Restart your CLI of choice. The SessionStart hook injects a brief on first message; no manual brief() call required.

Alternative installs

If you don't have pipx and don't want to install it:

# uv (Rust-fast Python tool runner) — no clone, single binary on PATH
uv tool install 'threadkeeper[semantic]' && thread-keeper-setup

# Plain pip into a venv
python3 -m venv ~/.threadkeeper-venv
~/.threadkeeper-venv/bin/pip install 'threadkeeper[semantic]'
~/.threadkeeper-venv/bin/thread-keeper-setup

For development (editable install from a git checkout) or to track the bleeding edge:

# One-liner installer — clones to ~/thread-keeper, makes a venv,
# editable-installs, wires every detected CLI. Idempotent — re-run to
# update (it git-pulls + reinstalls).
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/po4erk91/thread-keeper/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --semantic

# Or fully manual
git clone https://github.com/po4erk91/thread-keeper ~/thread-keeper
cd ~/thread-keeper && python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -e '.[semantic]'
.venv/bin/thread-keeper-setup

To preview without writing anything:

thread-keeper-setup --dry-run

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Multi-CLI integration

CLI	MCP config	Instructions file	Hooks	Transcripts ingested
Claude Code	~/.claude.json mcpServers	~/.claude/CLAUDE.md	~/.claude/settings.json hooks	~/.claude/projects/**/*.jsonl
Claude Desktop	~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json mcpServers (macOS); %APPDATA%\Claude\… (Win); ~/.config/Claude/… (Linux)	none (GUI-only)	not supported by the app	none — chats live in Electron IndexedDB
Codex (CLI + desktop)	~/.codex/config.toml [mcp_servers] (shared between CLI and Codex.app)	~/.codex/AGENTS.md	not supported	~/.codex/sessions/**/rollout-*.jsonl
Gemini	~/.gemini/settings.json mcpServers	~/.gemini/GEMINI.md	~/.gemini/settings.json hooks	~/.gemini/tmp/<user>/chats/session-*.jsonl
Copilot	~/.copilot/mcp-config.json mcpServers	~/.copilot/copilot-instructions.md	~/.copilot/hooks.json	~/.copilot/session-store.db (sqlite)
VS Code	~/Library/Application Support/Code/User/mcp.json servers (macOS); %APPDATA%\Code\User\mcp.json (Win); ~/.config/Code/User/mcp.json (Linux)	none (per-workspace only)	not supported	none — extensions own their history

Every CLI that produces parseable transcripts feeds the same dialog_messages table with a source tag, so dialog_search() finds matches regardless of where the conversation happened. Claude Desktop and the VS Code adapter are the exceptions — MCP registration only; their chats don't reach the table for now (Electron IndexedDB on the Claude Desktop side; per-extension stores on the VS Code side).

VS Code's user-level mcp.json is the central host that every MCP-aware VS Code extension consumes — GitHub Copilot Chat, the Anthropic Claude IDE plugin, the OpenAI Codex IDE plugin, Continue, Cline, … — so a single registration there reaches all of them at once.

Adding a new CLI = one file under threadkeeper/adapters/ implementing the CLIAdapter contract. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

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Core systems

Spawn — primary parallelism primitive

spawn(prompt, slim=True, role=..., visible=False, ...) launches a child Claude session via a claude -p subprocess. By default slim=True: the child loads only the thread-keeper MCP, no embeddings, no third-party servers. ~500 MB RSS versus ~1.3 GB for a full child. Heuristic for the parent: N≥2 modular independent units of ≥5 min each = spawn signal. Spawn also marks children with THREADKEEPER_SPAWNED_CHILD=1, so autonomous learning daemons cannot recursively start inside review forks.

A daemon measures combined child RSS every 10 s; admission control refuses a new spawn that would exceed THREADKEEPER_SPAWN_BUDGET_MB (3 GB default). Slim children that need semantic search delegate to the parent via search_via_parent — no per-child copy of the embedding model.

Learning loops

Five loops turn raw agent dialog into a curated, multi-CLI-mirrored skill library — autonomously, without requiring agents to call note() / verbatim_user() / close_thread() on their own (audit shows agents focused on their primary task rarely do).

Pipeline at a glance:

   every CLI's transcripts
            │
            ▼  (ingest, every 30s — always-on)
   dialog_messages  ◄──────────────────────────────────────┐
            │                                              │
            ├────────► [1] auto_review on close_thread     │
            │              (agent triggers — rare)         │
            │                  │                           │
            ├────────► [2] shadow_review daemon            │
            │              (cron, every 15 min)            │
            │                  │                           │
            ├────────► [3] extract daemon                  │
            │              (cron, every 10 min)            │
            │                  │                           │
            │              extract_candidates              │
            │                  │                           │
            │                  ▼                           │
            │          [4] candidate_reviewer daemon       │
            │              (cron, every 1 h) ──────────────┤
            │                  │                           │
            ▼                  ▼                           │
         brief()    SKILL.md + lessons.md ─► skill_usage   │
            │              │                  │            │
            │              ▼                  ▼            │
            │         (every configured       │            │
            │          skills/ root)          │            │
            │              │                  │            │
            │              └──────► [5] Curator daemon ───┘
            │                          (cron, every 7d)
            │                              │
            │                              ▼
            │                       REPORT-<date>.md
            ▼
   injected into every new session at SessionStart

Each loop in one row:

#	Loop	Default tick	Reads	Writes
1	auto_review on close_thread	on close_thread() for rich threads	the thread's notes	SKILL.md, lessons.md
2	shadow_review daemon	every 15 min (env knob)	recent dialog_messages window	SKILL.md, lessons.md
3	extract daemon	every 10 min (env knob)	recent dialog_messages window	extract_candidates pending queue
4	candidate-reviewer daemon	every 1 h (env knob)	pending candidates queue	SKILL.md (create/patch) / notes / verbatim / reject
5	Curator daemon	every 7 days (env knob)	every existing lesson + recently-touched skill	REPORT-<date>.md (advisory) or direct PATCH/PRUNE/CONSOLIDATE

All five write into the universal Skill format (SKILL.md under each known/configured skills root — ~/.claude/skills/, ~/.codex/skills/, existing ~/.agents/skills/, optional THREADKEEPER_EXTRA_SKILLS_DIRS, plus the canonical ~/.threadkeeper/skills/ mirror), with ~/.threadkeeper/lessons.md as a CLI-agnostic fallback for clients without a native skills loader (Gemini, Copilot, bare MCP).

1. Auto-review on close_thread

When a closed thread is rich (≥5 notes, ≥2 insight/move), close_thread spawns a slim child with SKILL_REVIEW_PROMPT + the thread's notes. The prompt is rubric-form (Q1–Q5 yes/no) with explicit positive examples for incident-vs-rule classification. The fork also receives a "recently active skills" block so it prefers PATCHing existing umbrellas over creating new ones (active-update bias). Child appends a lesson via lesson_append, writes/patches a skill via skill_manage or writes a skill file directly, then closes with mark_skill_materialized. If skill_path points at a SKILL.md (or a skill directory), thread-keeper immediately mirrors that whole skill into every configured skills root. Opt in with THREADKEEPER_AUTO_REVIEW=1.

2. Shadow-review daemon

Every THREADKEEPER_SHADOW_REVIEW_INTERVAL_S seconds (default off, 900 = 15 min recommended) scans the diff of dialog_messages since the last cursor across all CLIs at once. The window filters internal review-child sessions (no self-pollution) and strips adapter [tool_result] / [tool_call] noise (the "clean context" rule). If ≥500 chars of meaningful signal remain, spawns a slim observer child that decides on class-level learning. It is single-flight across the shared DB: if any shadow observer task is already running, the daemon does not spawn another one and does not advance the cursor. Shadow observer children are marked as spawned/background processes, so they cannot start their own shadow daemon even if a CLI drops the no-embeddings env. Idempotent through events.kind='shadow_review_pass'.

3. Extract daemon

Every THREADKEEPER_EXTRACT_INTERVAL_S seconds (default off, 600 = 10 min recommended) scans recent dialog_messages with heuristic matchers: locale-aware "I want / next time / always" patterns, headers + insight markers, bullet regularities, and paraphrase clusters via cosine ≥ 0.80. Each match enqueues a row in extract_candidates.status='pending'. Same self-pollution filter as shadow_review (internal review-child sessions excluded) plus message-level noise filter (compaction summaries, SKILL.md injections, subagent role prompts, test-runner log dumps).

Where shadow extracts CLASS-LEVEL durable rules, extract harvests PER-INCIDENT decision-shaped utterances. Heuristic, not LLM — findings get refined by loop 4.

4. Candidate-reviewer daemon

Every THREADKEEPER_CANDIDATE_REVIEW_INTERVAL_S seconds (default off, 3600 = 1 h recommended) consumes the pending queue extract built up. Spawns a slim LLM child that decides per candidate or per coherent cluster:

• SKILL.create — class-level rule; merge 2-5 related candidates into one skill (active-update bias prefers PATCH over CREATE)
• SKILL.patch — refines a recently-active skill
• SKILL.write_file — adds references/<topic>.md under an existing umbrella
• NOTE — per-incident decision (requires thread_id)
• VERBATIM — user quote worth preserving in brief()
• REJECT — false positive that slipped past extract's filters

Hard limits: max 2 new skills per pass, [PROTECTED] (pinned + foreground-authored) skills off-limits. Closes the gap between heuristic harvest and SKILL.md materialization — previously pending candidates accumulated indefinitely waiting for an agent to call accept_candidate() manually.

5. Autonomous Curator

Every THREADKEEPER_CURATOR_INTERVAL_S seconds (default off, 604800 = 7 days recommended) spawns a slim child that reviews the EXISTING lessons.md + skill_usage inventory and writes ~/.threadkeeper/curator/REPORT-<isodate>.md with KEEP / PATCH / CONSOLIDATE / PRUNE recommendations. Pinned and foreground-authored entries are marked [PROTECTED] in the inventory so the curator never proposes destructive changes against them.

Phase 1 is advisory-only (REPORT only); flip THREADKEEPER_CURATOR_DESTRUCTIVE=1 once trust builds to let the child apply its own recommendations directly.

Honest take

What works without agent cooperation (passive, opt-in via env):

• Loop 2 (shadow), 3 (extract), 4 (candidate-reviewer), 5 (curator) — all run from the parent process, never require note() or close_thread() from the agent

What depends on the agent calling tools explicitly:

• Loop 1 (auto-review on close_thread) — only fires if the agent closes threads, which the audit shows agents focused on coding tasks rarely do
• Manual skill_record(outcome='wrong') — strongest feedback signal to the Curator, but agents need to remember to flag bad skills

The whole point of having five loops (not one) is graceful degradation: even when agents don't actively contribute, loops 2-5 keep the library growing from passive observation of the dialog stream.

Dialectic user model

A model of you, accumulated as you use the agent. dialectic_claim, dialectic_evidence (support / contradict), dialectic_synthesis, dialectic_supersede. Honcho-inspired weighted, smoothed ratio (Σw_support − Σw_contradict) / (Σw_support + Σw_contradict + 3) → low / medium / high / disputed confidence. Grouped by domain (style, values, workflow, ...) in brief().

Source-based evidence discount. Each evidence row's effective weight is base_weight × discount(WRITE_ORIGIN). Foreground (direct user / human signal) = 1.0. shadow_review / background_review / candidate_review / curator review-forks = 0.5. Structural defence against self-confirmation loops: a claim that surfaces in brief() and then gets "confirmed" by a review-fork reading the same dialog can't ride that internal evidence all the way to high confidence — internal evidence buys half as much.

Discrete tier on each claim — hypothesis → observed → validated (plus disputed). Independent of the continuous confidence band; tier is the action-gating signal:

• validated → agent applies by default (★ in brief)
• observed → agent references and may mention the assumption (· in brief)
• hypothesis → active probe; surfaces in a separate currently_testing block so the agent watches the next user moves through that lens

Transitions are discrete events (tier_promoted / tier_demoted in the events table) with timestamps for an auditable trail of when each claim earned trust. Thresholds:

• hypothesis → observed: w_support ≥ 2.0 (claim has real backing)
• observed → validated: w_support ≥ 4.0 and no contradict in 14 days
• validated → observed: any recent contradict (demote on user pushback)
• any → disputed: w_contradict > w_support
• disputed → hypothesis: support overtakes contradict (recovery path)

i18n bundle

All multilingual regex and prompt fragments live in threadkeeper/i18n.py — the rest of the codebase stays English-only. Currently ships ten locales: English, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Arabic, Russian, Japanese (~82 % of the world's speakers).

Adding a new language is a two-file PR — see CONTRIBUTING.md.

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Configuration

The most-used env knobs (full list in threadkeeper/config.py):

Knob	Default	Purpose
THREADKEEPER_DB	~/.threadkeeper/db.sqlite	SQLite file
THREADKEEPER_AUTO_REVIEW	"" (off)	auto-review on close_thread
THREADKEEPER_SHADOW_REVIEW_INTERVAL_S	0 (off)	shadow daemon tick (s)
THREADKEEPER_SHADOW_REVIEW_WINDOW_S	900	sliding window for shadow scan (s)
THREADKEEPER_EXTRACT_INTERVAL_S	0 (off)	extract daemon tick (s); 600 = 10 min recommended
THREADKEEPER_EXTRACT_WINDOW_MIN	30	sliding dialog window per extract pass (min)
THREADKEEPER_CANDIDATE_REVIEW_INTERVAL_S	0 (off)	candidate-reviewer daemon tick (s); 3600 = 1h recommended
THREADKEEPER_CANDIDATE_REVIEW_MIN	3	min pending candidates before reviewer engages
THREADKEEPER_CURATOR_INTERVAL_S	0 (off)	curator daemon tick (s); 604800 = 7d recommended
THREADKEEPER_CURATOR_MIN_LESSONS	3	min lessons before curator engages
THREADKEEPER_CURATOR_DESTRUCTIVE	"" (advisory)	when "1": curator child applies its own PATCH/PRUNE/CONSOLIDATE directly instead of writing advisory REPORT only
THREADKEEPER_SPAWN_BUDGET_MB	3072	combined child RSS cap (MB); 0 disables
THREADKEEPER_MEMORY_GUARD_POLL_S	30	server RSS guard tick (s); 0 disables
THREADKEEPER_MEMORY_GUARD_WARN_MB	1536	notify/log when a server crosses this RSS
THREADKEEPER_MEMORY_GUARD_KILL_MB	3072	SIGTERM server above this RSS; 0 disables killing
THREADKEEPER_MEMORY_GUARD_AGG_WARN_MB	2048	notify/request trim when all server RSS crosses this
THREADKEEPER_MEMORY_GUARD_AGG_KILL_MB	3072	under aggregate pressure, retire stale idle servers
THREADKEEPER_MEMORY_GUARD_RECLAIM_MB	1024	local RSS floor before warn-triggered self trim
THREADKEEPER_MEMORY_GUARD_TARGET_SERVERS	1	aggregate-pressure target after retiring stale idle servers
THREADKEEPER_MEMORY_GUARD_RETIRE_IDLE_S	900	heartbeat age before a non-self server is retireable
THREADKEEPER_MEMORY_GUARD_RETIRE_LIVE	"" (off)	allow retiring parent-alive MCP servers; off protects live clients
THREADKEEPER_MEMORY_GUARD_NOTIFY	"1"	send macOS desktop notification when possible
THREADKEEPER_INGEST_INTERVAL_S	3	transcript ingest tick (s)
THREADKEEPER_NO_EMBEDDINGS	""	force-disable the embedding model (FTS5 + delegate only)
THREADKEEPER_EMBED_BACKEND	onnx	embedding runtime: onnx (fastembed, no PyTorch) or sentence-transformers (legacy fallback)
THREADKEEPER_EMBED_MODEL	paraphrase-multilingual-MiniLM-L12-v2	384-dim cross-lingual embedding model
THREADKEEPER_SPAWNED_CHILD	""	spawn-internal marker; disables autonomous daemons in children
THREADKEEPER_SKILL_NUDGE_INTERVAL	10	events between skill_hint nudges

Persist them via ~/.claude/settings.json's env block (Claude Code) or the equivalent env section in each CLI's config. Hot-config reload is tracked.

Per-loop agent dispatch

By default every learning-loop spawn runs through the same CLI that hosts thread-keeper — Opus-session ⇒ Opus spawn, Codex-session ⇒ Codex spawn, etc. Detection: process-tree walk at startup, cached for the server lifetime. The MCP tool spawn_status() shows the live resolution table.

Override per role via ~/.threadkeeper/spawn.toml:

[default]
agent = "auto"     # "auto" = use active CLI (default)

[loops]
# Force specific roles to specific CLIs regardless of active host
shadow_observer    = "claude"   # heaviest reasoning → keep on Claude
curator            = "codex"    # weekly audit → Codex is fine
candidate_reviewer = "auto"     # follow active CLI
archivist          = "claude"   # close_thread auto-review
extract            = "auto"     # this one is local (no spawn)

[models]
# Optional per-CLI model pin — overrides each CLI's own default
claude = "opus"
codex  = "gpt-5.4"
gemini = "gemini-2.5-pro"

Or via env (highest priority, overrides the TOML):

export THREADKEEPER_SPAWN_DEFAULT=codex                 # global default
export THREADKEEPER_SPAWN_LOOP_CURATOR=gemini           # per-role
export THREADKEEPER_SPAWN_MODEL_CLAUDE=opus             # per-CLI model
export THREADKEEPER_ACTIVE_CLI=claude                   # force detection

Adapters without headless support (Claude Desktop, VS Code) can't be spawn targets — spawn_status() reports them as "no adapter" and any override pointing at them falls back to the next priority level.

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Hygiene tools

Two tools keep the memory tidy — both default to dry_run=True, run them with dry_run=False to apply:

• consolidate() — dedup near-identical notes (intra-thread cosine ≥ 0.95), deduplicate verbatim quotes, demote untouched-active threads to idle after 30 days, release orphaned thread claims.

• validate_threads() — heuristic triage of active threads with four categories (first match wins per thread):

  • no_notes_old — active with zero notes ≥ 7 days → close as abandoned.
  • shipped — last note matches a shipped-marker regex (EN+RU: shipped/fixed/works/passed/done/merged/закрыто/готово/сделано/…) and has settled ≥ 3 days → close with the last move as outcome.
  • dropped_open_q — last note is an open_q left unfollowed ≥ 14 days → close as dropped.
  • stale_idle — any active not touched in ≥ 30 days → demote to idle (not closed — revives on next note()).

  Idle threads are never touched. Tunable via no_notes_days, shipped_settle_days, drop_open_q_days, stale_days, and shipped_markers (comma-separated extra tokens).

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Storage

~/.threadkeeper/db.sqlite (overridable via THREADKEEPER_DB). WAL mode for multi-writer concurrency. Optional notes_vec / dialog_vec HNSW indexes through sqlite-vec for sub-linear semantic search; fallback to Python-side cosine when the extension is missing.

One file. Backup = cp. Wipe memory = rm.

Hooks and small runtime artifacts: ~/.threadkeeper/hooks/.

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Embeddings

Semantic search runs paraphrase-multilingual-MiniLM-L12-v2 (384-dim, RU+EN+50 langs). The default backend is fastembed / ONNX Runtime — no PyTorch. A model-loaded process sits at ~700 MB physical footprint (~850 MB RSS), down from ~1.8 GB on the PyTorch backend.

A sentence-transformers (PyTorch) backend is kept as an opt-in fallback. It is heavier (~1.8 GB RSS) and produces vectors that are not numerically identical to the ONNX backend's, so switching backends warrants a recompute:

# Install the fallback runtime and switch to it:
pip install -e '.[semantic-st]'
export THREADKEEPER_EMBED_BACKEND=sentence-transformers

# After any backend switch, homogenize the stored corpus so queries and
# stored vectors live in the same space:
tk-migrate-embeddings --all          # or --notes-only / --dialog-only
tk-migrate-embeddings --dry-run      # report stale counts only

The migration is batched, resumable, and idempotent (a second run finds nothing stale). Both backends emit 384-dim vectors, so the vec0 schema is unchanged.

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Verifying ingest across CLIs

python scripts/tk_verify_ingest.py

Walks every installed CLI adapter, parses recent transcripts in an isolated tempdir DB, reports per-source message counts and any silent parse failures. Read-only with respect to live state.

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Tests

pip install -e '.[semantic,dev]'
python -m pytest

495 tests passing on Python 3.11 / 3.12 / 3.13 (1 skipped). CI runs the suite on every push and PR.

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Project layout

threadkeeper/
├── server.py             # MCP entry: python -m threadkeeper.server
├── _setup.py             # `thread-keeper-setup` installer
├── config.py             # env-driven defaults
├── db.py                 # SQLite schema + sqlite-vec loader
├── identity.py           # session, self-cid, daemon launchers
├── ingest.py             # adapter-driven transcript ingest
├── brief.py              # render_brief / render_context
├── shadow_review.py      # autonomous learning observer
├── i18n.py               # 10 locales of regex + prompt bundles
├── adapters/             # one file per supported CLI
│   ├── claude_code.py
│   ├── claude_desktop.py
│   ├── codex.py
│   ├── gemini.py
│   ├── copilot.py
│   └── vscode.py
└── tools/                # @mcp.tool entries — 89 of them
    ├── threads.py
    ├── peers.py
    ├── spawn.py
    ├── skills.py
    ├── dialectic.py
    ├── validate.py
    └── ...

Detailed map in docs/ARCHITECTURE.md. Open work in docs/ROADMAP.md and the Issues tab.

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Contributing

PRs welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for the project map, test workflow, and recipes for adding a new CLI adapter or a new locale. Look for the good-first-issue label.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.