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/scripts/adopt.sh
benchmark/	The measuring kit. Specs, held-out graders, the scorecard extractor, rubrics, and the provisioner that stage benchmark runs to measure how well the metasystem makes agents build. It measures the product from outside, so it lives outside.	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/scripts/adopt.sh <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; a script is on the backlog.
• Run a benchmark → benchmark/README.md.
• Change the metasystem itself → work in this repository under its own rules; the gates of record are metasystem/scripts/validate-metasystem.sh and benchmark/validate-kit.sh, and nothing is pushed on red.