🦀

cargo install decapod && decapod init

Decapod
The governance runtime for AI coding agents.

Local-first, repo-native, and built for verifiable delivery.

---

Why Decapod 🧠

AI coding agents can write code fast. Shipping it safely is the hard part.

Decapod gives agents a consistent operational contract: guided execution, enforceable boundaries, and auditable completion signals. It replaces "looks done" with explicit outcomes.

Decapod is invoked by agents; it never runs in the background. It is a single executable binary that provides deterministic primitives:

• Retrieve canon (constitution .md fragments) as context.
• Provide authoritative schemas for structured state (todos, knowledge, decisions).
• Run deterministic validation/proof gates to decide when work is truly done. Example gate: forbid direct pushes to protected branches — fails if the agent has unpushed commits on main.

AGENTS.md stays tiny (entrypoint). OVERRIDE.md handles local exceptions. Everything else is pulled just-in-time.

Traces: .decapod/data/traces.jsonl. Bindings: context.bindings. Architecture-agnostic (not coupled to a specific OS or CPU).

Recent independent research confirms this design direction: Evaluating AGENTS.md (Gloaguen et al., ETH SRI, 2026; AgentBench repo) found that LLM-generated context files tend to reduce agent performance while increasing cost by over 20 %; human-written minimal requirements can help slightly. Decapod was built independently and without knowledge of ETH SRI's AgentBench research or this paper.

☕ Like Decapod? Buy us a coffee on Ko-fi 💙

Assurance Model ✅

Decapod is built around three execution outcomes:

• Advisory: guidance toward the next high-value move.
• Interlock: hard stops for unsafe or out-of-policy flow.
• Attestation: structured evidence that completion criteria were met.

Operating Model ⚙️

Human Intent
    |
    v
AI Agent(s)  <---->  Decapod Runtime  <---->  Repository + Policy
                         |    |    |
                         |    |    +-- Interlock (enforced boundaries)
                         |    +------- Advisory (guided execution)
                         +------------ Attestation (verifiable outcomes)

Features ✨

• Agent-native CLI and RPC surface for deterministic operation.
• Guided project understanding through structured prompting.
• Standards-aware execution aligned with project policy.
• Workspace safety for isolated implementation flow.
• Validation and completion gates with explicit pass/fail outcomes.
• Multi-agent-ready orchestration surface for tooling integrations.

Getting Started 🚀

cargo install decapod
decapod init

Then use your agents as normal. Decapod works on your behalf from inside the agent.

Learn more about the embedded constitution.

Override constitution defaults with plain English in .decapod/OVERRIDE.md.

Contributing 🤝

git clone https://github.com/DecapodLabs/decapod
cd decapod
cargo build
cargo test
decapod validate

Documentation 📚

• Development guide: CONTRIBUTING.md
• Security policy: SECURITY.md
• Release history: CHANGELOG.md

Support 💖

• 🐛 File an issue
• ☕ Support on Ko-fi

License 📄

MIT. See LICENSE.