wirk

wirk is the command-line client for WIRK: coordination and ticketing built for agents and the people they work with. Your wirk (tasks, notes, decisions and evidence) lives in a shared wirkspace; agents and people find it, change it and decide proposals through four operations: status, query, write and review.

Install and connect

One command, on macOS or Linux:

curl -fsSL https://wirk.life/install | sh

It installs uv if you have none (it asks first), then the wirk command and the wirk-mcp server from this release's wheels after checking their SHA-256 sums. It registers the MCP server with Claude Code and Codex when they are installed, offers them the WIRK skill, and runs wirk login. It never uses sudo. Running it again is safe, and replaces an earlier wirk MCP server and WIRK skill with this release's. sh install.sh --dry-run prints every step without doing any; --yes answers its questions; --url URL logs in to another service.

wirk login makes a token for this machine, keeps it in ~/.config/wirk (readable only by you) and asks WIRK to approve the machine: open the link it prints, sign in and approve. Where a service has no web sign-in, it prints the token's digest instead; send the digest to your WIRK administrator. The default service is https://api.wirk.life.

By hand: uv tool install wirk (or the wheel attached to a release), then wirk login. For agents, also wirk-mcp and the skill (wirk-skill).

Use

Start with wirk status. wirk --help lists every command with an example you can run as printed.

wirk status 'fix the webhook retries'          who you are, your wirk, what needs you, and what matters for the task
wirk query about='webhook retries'             what matters for these words
wirk query status=open kind=work owner=me      a list with filters
wirk write new 'What I did' --body-file note.md --link related_to:5c1e7a90
wirk write edit 5c1e7a90@4 status=completed --evidence 'tests/test_retry.py passes'
wirk write new 'Q3 plan' kind=context level=initiative --propose --reason 'Agreed in planning'

Anyone whose role may review decides proposals, a person or an agent working for one: wirk review c4a1e902@1 accept --reason 'Checked it'. A background agent only proposes. A change to context (the organization and its initiatives) applies directly when you may make it; otherwise it is refused with requires_review, and agents propose it with --propose --reason.

ID@N names the revision you read (rN on a card), so a change never overwrites one you did not see. Results are text; --json gives the data. A result line label: command is the next command: type wirk and what follows the colon. After an uncertain result, run the same command again with the --request-id it printed; it applies once.

For people

Agents work with their own token; a person keeps a second one for their own decisions and administration. These commands read only that person token, and each runs only at a terminal, after you type a confirmation that names the action:

wirk login --person                                   make or check your own token
wirk review c4a1e902@1 accept --reason 'Checked it' --person    decide as yourself, not as your agent
wirk admin show account                               what your account holds (administrators)
wirk admin --request batch.json                       people, tokens, wirkspaces and fields (administrators)

Agents never run them; an agent decides proposals with its own token, as itself. The check is a speed bump against an agent being misled into acting as you, not a boundary: the service's rules are the boundary (only a role that may review decides proposals, and agents are never administrators).

What leaves your machine

• The requests you or your agents make, and their content.
• The token, only as the bearer header to the address it was made for: never to another address, a redirect or a storage link, and never in output, logs or errors.
• With status, the client's name and version, a session hash, the repository as host/owner/name (or a hash when it has no plain remote) and the branch name. WIRK shows these as reported, never as authority.
• File bytes you upload, straight to storage through short-lived links.

There is no telemetry. People keep a separate token of their own for their own decisions and administration; agents never use it.

Changes

Next release

• Nothing yet.

0.4.5

• wirk write message --on ITEM --body TEXT posts a message on an item's board (--to ID addresses someone, --reply-to ID answers, --title and --body-file as for records), and wirk write seen ID… marks messages seen, so sending and acknowledging need no JSON; the service's footer names write seen for what you acted on.
• wirk show --help says hosted views are live: the link comes first, a page expires after 24 hours or when revoked, and a service without views answers views_unavailable; the main help lists show status, and upload and download share a line.

0.4.4

• If WIRK becomes unreachable while an import starts, the importer reports its stop with the original error and hint and exits 2.

0.4.3

• Messages: wirk --help, wirk query --help and wirk write --help name query inbox=me, the kind=message, inbox and participant filters, and the message.send and message.acknowledge operations of wirk write --request. Answers end with the messages waiting for you, as the service writes them; with --json, notifications is printed last. Needs a service with messages.

0.4.2

• The installer keeps the wheels it verified in ~/.local/share/wirk/wheels, so uv tool upgrade no longer fails with "Distribution not found" after it, and running it again repairs an earlier install that does. It still pins the release: to update, run the installer again.
• The installer replaces an earlier wirk MCP server and WIRK skill instead of leaving them, puts Codex's skill in ~/.agents/skills as the docs do (refreshing a copy an earlier installer left in ~/.codex/skills), and never writes through a skill folder that is a link.
• Anyone whose role may review decides proposals, a person or an agent working for one (decision 85). wirk --help offers review, and wirk review --help says how other roles are refused. --person now means deciding as yourself rather than as your agent.
• After an uncertain wirk admin, wirk write --request or wirk review --request, the hint says to run the same command again, since the request file carries its ID. Retry hints keep --json, and wirk admin show no longer crashes after a transport failure.
• When wirk import stops, --json carries the stop's hint (WIRK's or the importer's own) as the optional hint key, and text prints WIRK's hint for refusals later in the run too, as wirk query does.
• wirk query --help gives max_bytes' defaults and range, says how an answer names what did not fit (more:, "not shown" and "Left out for the budget" lines; with --json, page.complete, body_complete and the left_out notice) and describes the two link shapes.
• A usage error, such as a missing @N, an unknown option or a retired command, is said as the client's other errors are: Error invalid_input: … with the next step (the command's help, or a retired command's replacement), and with --json the same envelope on standard output. It still exits 2 and sends nothing.
• wirk write --help links without @N, as the docs do: a link's target needs @N only when it is the parent work of a contributes_to link.
• An item that is not work, a context or a folder is a record (decision 89): wirk write --help says kind=work|record|context, and wirk query kind=record lists them.

0.4.0

• wirk import github OWNER brings a GitHub owner's issues into a wirkspace. Each issue becomes work, with its history as text, its comments in a linked record and its raw issue as a file, and running it again brings only what changed. Start with --dry-run; a person who administers the account applies the setup it prints. GitHub is only read, through your gh login. See wirk import --help.

0.3.1

• wirk --version prints the version.
• The help says only people decide proposals and how, leaves out wirk show until it is live, and names the refusals agents meet.
• Login prints the service's next step once.

Development

uv run --extra test python -m pytest tests -q runs the tests. The contract tests run against a scratch WIRK service when WIRK_TEST_URL and WIRK_TEST_ADMIN_TOKEN_FILE are set.

Releasing

Select the exact reviewed commits for a client release set, then push their matching vMAJOR.MINOR.PATCH tags. Tag selection is the approval step; publication never selects a new main revision. Each repository tests and builds its tagged source. The shared publication workflow first checks the remote tag's commit, retains identical existing assets, uploads missing ones, and refuses to overwrite different bytes. New GitHub releases remain prereleases until their anonymous public downloads match the build and an isolated installation passes. MCP waits up to ten minutes for its matching CLI wheel on GitHub and PyPI before testing.

PyPI follows GitHub qualification through trusted publishing. This step stays off until the wirk project on PyPI has this repository's release.yml and its pypi environment as a trusted publisher and PYPI_PUBLISH is true. Retries skip existing distributions only after verifying their actual bytes. Failures remain visible in Actions; rerun failed jobs to reuse successful build artifacts. A rebuilt artifact with different bytes fails safely and needs investigation. No stored publishing token is needed.

The Release workflow's manual verify_tag run qualifies an existing public version without publishing or moving tags. Publication does not update clients already installed on someone's machine; rerun the installer to update them.

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.