agentic-tools

This repository builds the metasystem: a portable set of working rules, scripts, and skills for repositories where agents (Claude Code, Codex, Devin) and humans build software together. One question organizes everything here: what ships to other repositories, and what merely helped build it?

The layout answers that question

Folder	What it is	Ships?
metasystem/	The product. The template that gets installed into other repositories. Its payload is an explicit allowlist; nothing else leaves.	The allowlisted parts, via metasystem system adopt
paper/	The paper. The book about the metasystem: why it exists and how it works, chapter by chapter, with its PDF build. This project's intent quotes it.	Never
development/	The building of it. Design docs, analysis, finished reports, this repository's own local rules, the evidence index.	Never
evidence/	Gitignored symlink to the durable evidence store, where full run transcripts and archived mission repositories live. Hundreds of megabytes a day of raw evidence would sink git; the tracked index of it is development/evidence-index.md.	Never

There is no "meta-meta system"

It is tempting to think this repository needs a third concept: the metasystem, plus some meta-meta thing that builds it. It does not, and the vocabulary stays two-level on purpose:

• The metasystem is equipment. It plays the same role here as in any repository that adopts it: hooks fire at turn ends, supervision watches processes, dispatch runs delegates, receipts accumulate, retros tune rules.
• This repository is simply an adopted repository whose product happens to be the metasystem's own source. Its metasystem/plans/ holds this project's plans, like any project's. Its metasystem/artifacts/ holds this project's live runtime state, like any project's — and transfers to no one.

What people mistake for a third layer is the ordinary software boundary between a source tree and a distribution. That boundary is enforced here, not narrated: the payload is an allowlist (a forgotten file stays home), the shipped files are swept for any trace of this repository, and one rule is audited mechanically — the kit may call into the metasystem; nothing shipped may reference outward.

Every path in metasystem/ carries one of three verdicts — SHIPS, PROJECT-STATE, or RUNTIME — in development/metasystem-inventory.md, each with the deciding rule.

I want to…

• Install the metasystem in a fresh repository → metasystem/bin/metasystem system adopt <target> --runtimes claude,codex and follow metasystem/docs/project-adaptation.md.
• Install it in a repository that already has agent rules → follow metasystem/docs/metasystem-reconciliation.md, written for an agent to execute with human review points.
• Upgrade an adopted repository to a newer template → the upgrade procedure in the same reconciliation manual (the recorded adoption SHA and the three-bucket rule). Currently a documented manual procedure; an engine verb is on the backlog.
• Work with goals and agents day to day → metasystem help human for your actions (goals, approval, budgets, start and stop) and metasystem help agent for build, review and land; the manual is metasystem/docs/working-with-agents.md.
• Change the metasystem itself → work in this repository under its own rules; the gate of record is the testing contract (metasystem test run), and nothing is pushed on red.