Before I go to bed, I tell my agents:

good night, have fun

Never wake up empty-handed.

gnhf is a ralph, autoresearch-style orchestrator that keeps your agents running while you sleep — each iteration makes one small, committed, documented change towards an objective. You wake up to a branch full of clean work and a log of everything that happened.

• Dead simple — one command starts an autonomous loop that runs until you request stop or a configured runtime cap is reached
• Long running — each iteration is committed on success, rolled back on failure except commit failures preserved for repair, with sensible retries; retryable hard agent errors back off exponentially while agent-reported failures continue immediately
• Live terminal title — interactive runs keep your terminal title updated with live status, token totals, and commit count, then clear or restore it on exit depending on terminal support; token totals prefixed with ~ are estimates
• Exit summary: every run ends with a permanent summary covering elapsed time, branch, iterations, tokens, branch diff stats, local notes/log paths, and review commands
• Agent-agnostic: works with Claude Code, Codex, Rovo Dev, OpenCode, GitHub Copilot CLI, Pi, or ACP targets out of the box

Quick Start

$ gnhf "reduce complexity of the codebase without changing functionality"
# have a good sleep

$ gnhf "reduce complexity of the codebase without changing functionality" \
    --max-iterations 10 \
    --max-tokens 5000000
# have a good nap

# Run multiple agents on the same repo simultaneously using worktrees
$ gnhf --worktree "implement feature X" &
$ gnhf --worktree "add tests for module Y" &
$ gnhf --worktree "refactor the API layer" &

# Commit directly on the current branch and push after each successful iteration
$ gnhf --current-branch --push "keep improving this app"

Run gnhf from inside a Git repository with a clean working tree. If you are starting from a plain directory, run git init first. gnhf supports macOS, Linux, and Windows.

Install

npm

npm install -g gnhf

From source

git clone https://github.com/kunchenguid/gnhf.git
cd gnhf
npm install
npm run build
npm link

How It Works

                    ┌─────────────┐
                    │  gnhf start │
                    └──────┬──────┘
                           ▼
                ┌──────────────────────┐
                │  validate clean git  │
                │  create or use branch │
                │  write prompt.md     │
                └──────────┬───────────┘
                           ▼
              ┌────────────────────────────┐
              │  build iteration prompt    │◄──────────────┐
              │  (inject notes.md context) │               │
              └────────────┬───────────────┘               │
                           ▼                               │
              ┌────────────────────────────┐               │
              │  invoke your agent         │               │
              │  (non-interactive mode)    │               │
              └────────────┬───────────────┘               │
                           ▼                               │
                    ┌─────────────┐                        │
                    │  success?   │                        │
                    └──┬──────┬───┘                        │
                  yes  │      │  no                        │
                       ▼      ▼                            │
              ┌──────────┐  ┌───────────┐                  │
              │  commit  │  │ reset or  │                  │
              │  append  │  │  repair   │                  │
              │ notes.md │  │ maybe wait│                  │
              └────┬─────┘  └─────┬─────┘                  │
                   │              │                        │
                   │   ┌──────────┘                        │
                   ▼   ▼                                   │
              ┌────────────┐    yes   ┌──────────┐         │
              │ 3 consec.  ├─────────►│  abort   │         │
              │ failures   │          └────▲─────┘         │
              │ or perm.   ├───────────────┘               │
              │ error?     │                               │
              └─────┬──────┘                               │
                 no │                                      │
                    └──────────────────────────────────────┘

• Incremental commits - each successful iteration is a separate unsigned git commit, so you can cherry-pick or revert individual changes without GPG or SSH signing prompts blocking the run; if git commit fails, gnhf preserves the uncommitted work and asks the next agent iteration to repair it
• Failure handling - failed iterations are rolled back with git reset --hard except commit failures, which preserve uncommitted work for repair; agent-reported failures proceed to the next iteration immediately, retryable hard agent errors use exponential backoff, and permanent agent errors such as Claude low credit balance abort immediately and print the run log path. Complete no-op iterations are reported as failures and count toward the consecutive-failure abort limit. If the run exits with a pending commit failure, the exit summary warns that uncommitted changes were left for repair.
• Runtime caps - --max-iterations stops before the next iteration begins, --max-tokens can abort mid-iteration once reported usage reaches the cap, and --stop-when ends the loop after an iteration whose agent output reports the natural-language condition is met unless a commit failure needs repair first; resumed runs reuse the saved stop condition unless you pass a new value, or --stop-when "" to clear it; pending commit-failure repair work is preserved and other uncommitted work is rolled back, and in the interactive TUI the final state remains visible until you press Ctrl+C to exit
• Iteration finalization - agents are expected to finish validation, stop any background processes they started, and only then emit the final JSON result for the iteration
• Graceful interrupts - in the interactive TUI, the first Ctrl+C requests a graceful stop and lets the current iteration finish (or ends backoff early), the second Ctrl+C force-stops immediately, and SIGTERM also force-stops immediately
• Exit summary - after shutdown cleanup, gnhf prints a permanent stdout summary with the final branch, elapsed time, iteration and token totals, branch diff stats, notes/debug-log paths, and review commands
• Shared memory — the agent reads notes.md (built up from prior iterations) to communicate across iterations
• Local run metadata — gnhf stores prompt, notes, stop conditions, and commit-message convention metadata under .gnhf/runs/ and ignores it locally, so your branch only contains intentional work
• Resume support — run gnhf while on an existing gnhf/ branch to pick up where a previous run left off; if you provide a different prompt, gnhf asks whether to update the saved prompt and continue with the existing history, start a new branch, or quit. New runs whose generated branch already exists use a numeric suffix such as gnhf/<slug>-1.

Live Branch Mode

Pass --current-branch to run on the branch you are already on instead of creating a gnhf/ branch. Pass --push to push the current branch after each successful iteration. Together, --current-branch --push is useful for loose projects where you want a deployed or locally watched branch to update throughout the run.

• Re-running the same prompt with --current-branch resumes the existing .gnhf/runs/<runId>/ history on a clean working tree and continues iteration numbering.
• Push failures abort the run after preserving the successful local commit.
• gnhf never force-pushes or auto-pulls for this mode.
• --push also works with the default gnhf/ branch mode and sets origin as the upstream when needed.
• Do not combine --current-branch with --worktree; gnhf exits with an error because those modes choose different working directories.

Worktree Mode

Pass --worktree to run each agent in an isolated git worktree. This lets you launch multiple agents on the same repo simultaneously — each gets its own working directory and branch without interfering with the others or your main checkout.

<repo>/                              ← your repo (unchanged)
<repo>-gnhf-worktrees/
  ├── <run-slug-1>/                  ← worktree for agent 1
  └── <run-slug-2>/                  ← worktree for agent 2

• Worktrees with commits are preserved after the run so you can review, merge, or cherry-pick the work. gnhf prints the path and cleanup command.
• Re-running the same prompt with --worktree resumes a preserved matching worktree when possible; otherwise gnhf creates a suffixed worktree such as <run-slug>-1 if the original name is unavailable.
• Worktrees with no commits are automatically removed on exit unless a pending commit failure left uncommitted work to inspect or repair.
• --worktree must be run from a non-gnhf branch (typically main).

CLI Reference

Command	Description
gnhf "<prompt>"	Start a new run with the given objective
gnhf	Resume a run (when on an existing gnhf/ branch)
echo "<prompt>" | gnhf	Pipe prompt via stdin
cat prd.md | gnhf	Pipe a large spec or PRD via stdin

If you run gnhf on an existing gnhf/ branch with a different prompt, gnhf asks whether to update prompt.md and continue the existing run history, start a new branch, or quit. When the prompt came from stdin, that confirmation is read from the controlling terminal, so it must be available.

Flags

Flag	Description	Default
--agent <agent>	Agent to use (claude, codex, rovodev, opencode, copilot, pi, or acp:<target-or-command>)	config file (claude)
--max-iterations <n>	Abort after n total iterations	unlimited
--max-tokens <n>	Abort after n total input+output tokens	unlimited
--stop-when <cond>	End when the agent reports this condition, after any commit-failure repair; persists across resume	unlimited
--prevent-sleep <mode>	Prevent system sleep during the run (on/off or true/false)	config file (on)
--worktree	Run in a separate git worktree (enables multiple agents concurrently)	false
--current-branch	Run on the current branch instead of creating a gnhf/ branch	false
--push	Push the current branch after each successful iteration	false
--meteor-frequency <n>	Set TUI meteor frequency from 0 to 5 (0 disables meteors)	3
--version	Show version

Configuration

Config lives at ~/.gnhf/config.yml:

# Agent to use by default (claude, codex, rovodev, opencode, copilot, pi, or acp:<target-or-command>)
agent: claude

# Custom paths to native agent binaries (optional)
# agentPathOverride:
#   claude: /path/to/custom-claude
#   codex: /path/to/custom-codex
#   copilot: /path/to/custom-copilot
#   pi: /path/to/custom-pi

# Native agent CLI arg overrides (optional)
# agentArgsOverride:
#   codex:
#     - -m
#     - gpt-5.4
#     - -c
#     - model_reasoning_effort="high"
#     - --full-auto
#   copilot:
#     - --model
#     - gpt-5.4
#   pi:
#     - --provider
#     - openai-codex
#     - --model
#     - gpt-5.5
#     - --thinking
#     - high

# Custom ACP target commands (optional)
# acpRegistryOverrides:
#   my-fork: "/usr/local/bin/my-claude-code-fork --acp"
#   staging: "node /opt/staging/agent.mjs"

# Commit message convention (optional)
# Defaults to: gnhf <iteration>: <summary>
# Use the conventional preset for semantic-release compatible headers:
# commitMessage:
#   preset: conventional

# Abort after this many consecutive failures
maxConsecutiveFailures: 3

# Prevent the machine from sleeping during a run
preventSleep: true

If the file does not exist yet, gnhf creates it on first run using the resolved defaults.

CLI flags override config file values. --prevent-sleep accepts on/off as well as true/false; the config file always uses a boolean. The iteration and token caps are runtime-only flags and are not persisted in config.yml; --stop-when is persisted per run for resume, but not in config.

agentArgsOverride.<name> lets you pass through extra CLI flags for native agents (claude, codex, rovodev, opencode, copilot, or pi). ACP targets do not support path or arg overrides in this version. Use acpRegistryOverrides to map acp:<target> names to custom spawn commands for local, forked, or beta ACP agents. You can also pass a raw custom ACP server command directly as a quoted acp: spec, for example gnhf --agent 'acp:./bin/dev-acp --profile ci' "fix the tests".

• Use it for agent-specific options like models, profiles, or reasoning settings without adding a dedicated gnhf config field for each one.
• For codex, claude, and copilot, gnhf adds its usual non-interactive permission default only when you do not provide your own permission or execution-mode flag. If you set one explicitly, gnhf treats that as user-managed and does not add its default on top.
• Flags that gnhf manages itself for a given agent, such as output-shaping or local-server startup flags, are rejected during config loading so you get a clear error instead of duplicate-argument ambiguity. For pi specifically, --api-key is also blocked; configure the Pi API key via Pi's own config or the environment variable it reads, not via agentArgsOverride.

commitMessage controls the subject line that gnhf uses for each successful iteration commit.

• Omit it to keep the default gnhf <iteration>: <summary> format.
• Set preset: conventional to ask the agent for type and optional scope, then commit as type(scope): summary for semantic-release style workflows. Valid types are build, ci, docs, feat, fix, perf, refactor, test, and chore; invalid or missing types fall back to chore, and empty scopes are omitted.
• The resolved commit-message convention is saved per run, so resuming keeps the original subject format even if config.yml changes later.

Custom Agent Paths

Use agentPathOverride to point any native agent at a custom binary - useful for wrappers like Claude Code Switch or custom Codex builds that accept the same flags and arguments as the original:

agentPathOverride:
  claude: ~/bin/claude-code-switch
  codex: /usr/local/bin/my-codex-wrapper
  copilot: ~/bin/copilot-wrapper
  pi: ~/bin/pi-wrapper

Paths may be absolute, bare executable names already on your PATH, ~-prefixed, or relative to the config directory (~/.gnhf/). The override replaces only the binary name; all standard arguments are preserved, so the replacement must be CLI-compatible with the original agent. On Windows, .cmd and .bat wrappers are supported, including bare names resolved from PATH. For rovodev, the override must point to an acli-compatible binary since gnhf invokes it as <bin> rovodev serve .... When sleep prevention is enabled, gnhf uses the native mechanism for your OS: caffeinate on macOS, systemd-inhibit on Linux, and a small PowerShell helper backed by SetThreadExecutionState on Windows.

Debug Logs

Every run writes a JSONL debug log to .gnhf/runs/<runId>/gnhf.log alongside notes.md. Lifecycle events for the orchestrator, agent, and HTTP requests are captured with elapsed timings and (for failures) the full error.cause chain, which is what you need to tell a bare TypeError: fetch failed apart from an undici UND_ERR_HEADERS_TIMEOUT. The agent's own streaming output still goes to the per-iteration iteration-<n>.jsonl file next to it. Raw ACP command specs are redacted as acp:custom/custom in debug logs and related errors, so local paths or secrets in custom commands are not written to gnhf.log.

Including a snippet of gnhf.log is the single most useful thing you can attach when filing an issue.

Telemetry

gnhf sends anonymous usage telemetry to my self-hosted analytics so I can see what's actually getting used. No prompts, repo paths, or branch names are sent. Set GNHF_TELEMETRY=0 to turn it off.

Agents

gnhf supports six native agents plus ACP targets. ACP support is powered by acpx, which is bundled with gnhf and provides the runtime and agent registry for acp:<target-or-command> specs.

Agent	Flag	Requirements	Notes
Claude Code	--agent claude	Install Anthropic's claude CLI and sign in first.	gnhf invokes claude directly in non-interactive mode. After Claude emits a successful structured result, gnhf treats that result as final and shuts down any lingering Claude process tree after a short grace period.
Codex	--agent codex	Install OpenAI's codex CLI and sign in first.	gnhf invokes codex exec directly in non-interactive mode.
GitHub Copilot CLI	--agent copilot	Install GitHub Copilot CLI and sign in first.	gnhf invokes copilot directly in non-interactive JSONL mode. Copilot currently exposes assistant output tokens, but not full input/cache token totals; see github/copilot-cli#1152.
Pi	--agent pi	Install the pi CLI and configure a usable provider/model first.	gnhf invokes pi directly in JSON mode, appends the final output schema to the prompt, and disables Pi session persistence with --no-session.
Rovo Dev	--agent rovodev	Install Atlassian's acli and authenticate it with Rovo Dev first.	gnhf starts a local acli rovodev serve --disable-session-token <port> process automatically in the repo workspace.
OpenCode	--agent opencode	Install opencode and configure at least one usable model provider first.	gnhf starts a local opencode serve --hostname 127.0.0.1 --port <port> --print-logs process automatically, creates a per-run session, and applies a blanket allow rule so tool calls do not block on prompts.
ACP target	--agent acp:<target-or-command>	Install and authenticate the target supported by the bundled acpx registry, such as acp:gemini, or pass a quoted custom ACP server command.	gnhf runs the target through ACP with a persistent per-run session under .gnhf/runs/<runId>/acp-sessions; token usage and --max-tokens use ACP used deltas when available, with prompt-length plus tool-call estimates as a fallback, and agentPathOverride and agentArgsOverride do not apply.

Development

If you want to contribute changes back to this repo, see CONTRIBUTING.md. Human-authored PRs targeting main must be opened via git push no-mistakes so the required Require no-mistakes check passes.

npm run build          # Build with tsdown
npm run dev            # Watch mode
npm test               # Build, then run all tests (vitest)
npm run test:e2e       # Build, then run end-to-end tests against the mock opencode executable
npm run lint           # ESLint
npm run format         # Prettier

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