AgentOps

DevOps discipline for AI coding agents.

Install · The loop · Goals · Try it · Skills · Make it yours · Evidence · Beyond AgentOps

DevOps makes software delivery repeatable through shared practices, automated checks and feedback. AgentOps brings that discipline to agentic coding sessions: paved paths your agents can follow from intent to checked results, with memory to carry useful context into the next task.

Those paths combine skills with the ao CLI and your existing engineering tools. Plan clarifies the expected behavior; Test helps check it; Validate adds independent judgment where needed. Skills guide the agent's decisions; executable gates check specific contracts. Beads preserves the work graph, decisions, results and project memories. Memory curates supported findings into linked project knowledge, connecting lessons to the work and sources behind them. The next session can use that record instead of starting over.

The skills are a kit, and you are expected to change it. Each skill is one Markdown file of instructions. Keep the ones that fit how you work, rewrite the ones that almost fit, delete the rest, and add skills you write yourself or find in other libraries. What you end up with is your own operating model for agents, which is the reason this project exists. Make it yours shows how.

Use these paths with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, Pi and other coding agents, or personal assistants such as OpenClaw and Grok Bot. Start with one useful task; follow the operational loop for a change or the goal workflow for work across sessions. When you need a larger software factory, extend the same practices with Gas City or tools from the Agentic Coding Flywheel.

Why use AgentOps?

A software factory makes engineering practices reusable through tools, guidance and repeatable workflows. AgentOps brings that approach into the coding session: clear intent, automated checks, recorded decisions and a feedback loop into later work. Pick the path your task needs and use the same practices when you change agents.

Behavior-driven development (BDD) starts by agreeing on what the software should do in a concrete situation. For retries, that could mean: “If a completed job arrives again, return its result and charge the customer only once.” The same behavior guides the implementation, its tests and any review. Plan helps you settle those expectations before the agent starts editing.

When you need to…	AgentOps adds
Decide what to do with an incoming report	Triage reproduces a bug report, external PR or alert, checks for duplicates and earlier decisions, and recommends an outcome with the evidence behind it. Accepted work gets a brief an agent can act on without the original conversation.
Get the agent to build what you meant	Plan makes the expected behavior clear enough to implement and test. Domain keeps the same names for concepts in the request, code and tests.
Fix a design that makes every change expensive	Architecture finds where the structure makes change costly and compares at least two interface designs by the call sites they produce. Refactor then makes the chosen change without changing behavior.
Build a tool that agents can use	Ergonomics checks whether an agent can find a CLI, API or MCP tool, read its output and recover from its errors, with the exact command and output behind each finding.
Keep a project moving after the chat ends	Interview settles a large goal with you. Beads preserves its intent, decisions and results in a searchable work graph, with persistent project memories for later sessions. Navigate identifies ready work, blockers and gaps in the goal.
Check whether the finished change meets the request

Quickstart

Pick one method per agent: a plugin plus npx on the same agent gives you every skill twice.

claude plugin marketplace add boshu2/agentops
claude plugin install agentops@agentops-marketplace
claude plugin details agentops@agentops-marketplace

Check that agentops appears in the plugin inventory. The bundle includes skills, four agents and tool-call guards.

codex plugin marketplace add boshu2/agentops
codex plugin add agentops@agentops-marketplace
codex plugin list --json

Check that agentops appears in the inventory. Skills use the agentops: prefix; custom roles and read limits have separate setup.

With Node.js installed, run from your project directory, then pick your agents and skills:

npx skills@latest add boshu2/agentops

Add -g for a user-level install. In scripts, name the agents: npx skills@latest add boshu2/agentops -g -a cursor opencode -y (-y without -a can install into every agent the installer knows). Installer targets include cursor, opencode, gemini-cli, antigravity, pi, grok (Grok Build) and openclaw. Grok Bot has no installer target; add the same SKILL.md folders through its skill settings. Some skills need extra tools (install guide); what each host has been tested for is in host coverage and limits.

Start a new session so the skills load. Most skills need only your coding agent; a few use the ao CLI when it is installed. Invocation names vary by agent: this README shows Claude Code's /agentops:<skill>; Codex uses $agentops:<skill>.

The operational loop

Each change is shaped, built and checked. Use one fresh review when requested, when a mistake cannot be cheaply undone, or when no deterministic check covers the changed behavior. You (or Plan) write intent as behavior (BDD), using one word per concept (DDD's ubiquitous language). For a system that calls queued work a Job, in Gherkin:

Feature: Job redelivery is idempotent
  A Job is one unit of queued work. Delivering it again never repeats its side effect.

  Scenario: A completed Job is delivered again
    Given Job "J-42" completed and charged the customer $20
    When the worker receives Job "J-42" again
    Then it returns the completed result of "J-42"
    And the customer has been charged $20 exactly once

  Scenario: A Job that failed before charging is delivered again
    Given Job "J-43" failed before charging the customer $20
    When the worker receives Job "J-43" again
    Then Job "J-43" completes
    And the customer has been charged $20 exactly once

The feature defines the domain term once; each scenario has concrete data, one action and an observable result. Keep scenarios in the issue or conversation; no .feature file is required.

Step	Skill	What it does with the scenarios
Shape	plan	Turns the request into scenarios for one small change. Skip it when intent is clear.
Build	implement	Makes the change and tests both scenarios.
Judge when needed	validate	A new session that didn't write it returns PASS, FAIL or NOT_PROVEN against the same scenarios.
Learn	memory	Optional: reviewed .context/ pages that later work can query.

Enter at the step you need. An existing change can enter at Validate when an acceptance judgment is needed. Ordinary changes finish on checks and CI. Review is one round: repair findings and confirm with affected checks; review again only when you ask. Report NOT_PROVEN with its gaps. The author cannot issue its own PASS. Merging and releasing follow your repo's rules.

Goals

rpi runs Plan → Implement → checks, with Validate where a mistake is costly, for one outcome without check-ins (your agent's permission prompts still apply) and stops at acceptance, a blocker or a spent limit. Bigger work becomes a goal (it needs Beads: brew install beads, then bd init in your repo):

1. Interview. One question at a time, each with a recommended answer. You settle the outcome, its examples, domain terms, non-goals, authority and budget before agents go autonomous.
2. Craft Goal. Returns SAFE_TO_CREATE plus a prompt to paste into /goal (Claude Code or Codex), USE_RPI (small enough for rpi), or UNSAFE_GOAL plus what's undecided. It creates nothing itself.
3. Navigate each round. Picks a few ready work items (beads); each gets one RPI, checks and CI, with one fresh Validate when requested, hard to undo, or uncovered by a deterministic check. The goal ends ACHIEVED, NOT_ACHIEVED or NEEDS_OPERATOR.

Beads remembers the work. Beads (bd) keeps the goal and its history outside any conversation. The root epic holds acceptance; child beads carry the scoped work, design decisions, handoffs and result notes. Record which checks ran and link any review evidence to the same bead. That connects the original intent to the checked output, so the next session can continue from the record instead of reconstructing the chat. bd ready finds unblocked work; search and history help explain earlier choices.

Beads also has a persistent memory store. bd remember saves project facts, bd memories searches them, bd recall retrieves one by key, and bd prime brings stored memories into session context. The work graph and the memory store serve different needs: one preserves what happened; the other keeps selected facts easy to find again.

Memory helps you use that material: recall relevant context, examine recorded decisions and outcomes, or draft a report with links to its evidence. When you want a reusable project document, it curates supported findings into reviewed .context/ pages or an external document bundle. Beads keeps the work record; Git and the original evidence locations keep the code and check artifacts. Reusable documents link back to those sources.

bd search "redelivery" --status all     # include finished work
bd show <bead-id>                        # intent, notes and relationships
bd history <bead-id>                     # how the record changed
bd remember "Redelivery returns the stored Job result" --key job-redelivery
bd recall job-redelivery                # retrieve the saved project fact

One bead per worker. When the goal delegates, the orchestrator holds the graph and results, and each worker starts with one bead instead of the orchestrator's transcript. Reviewers, when needed, start fresh.

bd create "Job redelivery is idempotent" -t epic
bd create "Return the completed result on redelivery" --parent <epic-id>
bd dep add <later-id> <earlier-id>         # real ordering only
bd ready --parent <epic-id>                # the frontier

Navigate shows bd commands; another tracker with status, dependencies and notes works if you map them. AgentOps never builds a second work index.

Try it

Start read-only in any repo, then swap the Job example for your own change.

# First look (changes nothing)
/agentops:research how does this repo validate input? cite files and lines, change nothing

# One change
/agentops:plan make Job redelivery return the completed result without repeating the side effect
/agentops:implement
/agentops:validate     # when requested, hard to undo, or uncovered by checks; use a new session

# One outcome, end to end
/agentops:rpi make Job redelivery return the completed result without repeating the side effect

# A goal
/agentops:interview make the job worker safe under redelivery, retries and crash recovery
/agentops:craft-goal   # then paste its prompt into /goal

Pick a finished change whose accepted behavior is recorded in an issue or conversation. Run the required checks and keep the candidate unchanged. Installing ao is optional; it gives Validate a content manifest for the change. Then open a new conversation, fill in the references and paste:

Use the AgentOps Validate skill to judge this finished change.
Original accepted behavior: [issue link or original request text]
Candidate: [commit, branch or working tree; list every changed path]
Author context ID: [task/session ID that made the change]
Checks run: [commands and results]
I opened this new conversation for fresh review. Derive the exact subject
identity at the start and end, inspect every changed path against the original
behavior, and do not modify the candidate. Report PASS, FAIL or NOT_PROVEN with
evidence for each criterion, checked, not_checked, author and reviewer context
IDs, and freshness attestation.

PASS needs evidence for every criterion and an empty not_checked. FAIL names failed behavior or an out-of-scope change. Missing proof, identity or path coverage is NOT_PROVEN.

Paste this in an agent conversation in your project. It needs no ao CLI.

Use the AgentOps Research skill to trace how this repository validates user
input. Follow one path from the input through its checks and tests. Cite the
files and line numbers, explain one edge case, and identify missing coverage.
Name the Research skill file you loaded. Answer here without changing files.

The reported skill path catches missing or duplicate installs. Invoke Research directly with /agentops:research in Claude Code, $agentops:research in Codex, or / and the installed Research entry in Cursor.

Skills at a glance

All skills are optional. Load one when it answers a specific question. Full catalog: docs/SKILL-ROUTER.md.

Group	Skills	What it covers
Operational loop	plan implement validate	Shape and build a change; judge it where a mistake is costly
Autonomous	rpi	One outcome, end to end
Goals	interview craft-goal navigate	Shape, write and walk a goal over the bead graph
Coordination	orchestrate agent-native	Fresh workers per bead, disjoint scopes, integration
On demand	research domain

Make it yours

Every skill here is a folder with one SKILL.md: plain instructions an agent loads when a task calls for them. No skill depends on the full set, and coding with none of them still works. That makes the library easy to take apart, and you should. The 31 skills are a starting point for an operating model that fits your work.

• Start small. Install two or three skills that match work you already do. Add another when a real task asks for it.
• Cut what you override. If you or the agent keep ignoring a rule, change the rule or remove the skill. npx skills lets you pick skills per agent, and ao skills link --skill <name> links an exact subset from a checkout.
• Rewrite what almost fits. Fork this repository, edit the SKILL.md and install from your fork with the same commands, or link a checkout so every agent on your machine reads your edits. A plugin update replaces the installed copy, so keep your changes in a repository you control.
• Write your own. When you have explained the same thing to an agent three times, it is a skill. Skill Builder drafts the package, and tells you when a note in an existing file is enough.
• Mix libraries. Run these next to your company's skills, the Agentic Coding Flywheel tools or any other library. ao skills link never replaces a skill it did not install.
• Change the workflows too. The operational loop and the goal workflow are defaults. Skip the steps your work does not need, reorder them, or write your own.
• Measure what you change. claude plugin eval compares an agent with and without a plugin on the same request. To measure one edit, run the old and the new version as two plugins. Skill Eval covers how to read the result, and Evidence shows the cases this repository runs; copy them for your own skills.

Evidence

A skill is a page of instructions, so the test is whether an agent does anything differently with it installed. AgentOps runs that test on Claude Code's own evaluator, claude plugin eval: one realistic request per skill, graded against four or five criteria taken from the practice the skill teaches. For Test, one criterion is that a regression test is shown failing without the fix.

On Claude Opus 5.5, measured 2026-10-22 and 2026-10-23 over five rounds; the 3.10 column is the stored 2026-10-05 result:

	No plugin	AgentOps 3.10	AgentOps 3.11
Practice criteria met on 29 requests	265 of 387 (68%)	363 of 387 (94%)	704 of 774 (91%)
Matching skill loaded on its own request		62 of 75 runs	104 of 150 runs

Sixteen of the 32 skills moved their case by 0.15 or more. Claude Exec, Skill Builder, Plan, Craft Goal and Using GC gained the most. Seven cases had no room to move: the agent met every criterion with no plugin.

Read the limits before you quote these numbers:

• One request per skill, six runs with 3.11, three with 3.10 and three without, one model. A difference under 0.15 is noise.
• The criteria come from each skill's own rules. A pass shows the rule landed on that request. It says nothing about the outcome of a real task, and an earlier coding pilot found no end-to-end difference.
• Loading is the weak point. 3.11 loads its skills less often than 3.10 did, and Implement and Research never load on their own. Four tested causes do not explain it. Name the skill when you want its rules applied: RPI, Postmortem, Interview and Craft Goal loaded on 22 of 24 requests that named them.

The full report has every case, each round's rule and result, and what was rerun. The cases live in evals/plugin-eval/: run them against your own changes, or copy the layout to test your own skills.

Where AgentOps fits

AgentOps grew from applying DevOps experience and established engineering practice to agents. The Practice Registry records the lineage; how it works covers responsibilities.

Project or tool	Role alongside AgentOps
Compound Engineering	A connected development workflow and reusable solution records
Matt Pocock's skills	Composable practices for intent, domain modeling, TDD and review
Beads or your existing tracker	Owns work status, dependencies and handoffs
Factories such as Gas City	Own agent coordination and execution through their native control plane

Choose which workflow leads the task. Carry accepted behavior and evidence into checks, and into independent judgment where a mistake would be costly. Shared practices are not proof that every combination has been tested.

ao CLI (optional)

Most skills need only your coding agent. With ao installed, Validate binds the exact change it judges to a content manifest; without it, Validate names the commit and the changed paths.

brew tap boshu2/agentops
brew trust --tap boshu2/agentops
brew install agentops
ao version

With Go installed: go install github.com/boshu2/agentops/cli/cmd/ao@latest. ao init is optional evidence setup; ao config --show inspects configuration; ao gate check runs this repository's own gates (mainly for contributors). See the command reference and installation guide.

Updating and advanced setup

Version 3.11 keeps every 3.10 command and skill name. It adds triage, architecture and ergonomics, and folds methods from other public skill libraries into 27 skills; none of that is measured yet. Read the 3.11 release notes. Use the plugin update instructions or, for npx installs, npx skills@latest update (update notes). For Homebrew: brew update && brew upgrade agentops. In a source checkout, run git pull --ff-only, then rerun ao skills link with the selectors you used before, adding --skill triage --skill architecture --skill ergonomics for the new skills; without selectors it links every skill. Start a new session afterward; new installs do not silently remove obsolete copies.

Upgrading from 3.8 or earlier: version 3.9 removed ten bundled external tool skills, retired three delivery workflows, deleted the old curl installers and changed the Codex plugin to read skills/ directly. Read the 3.9 release notes first.

Upgrading from 3.6 or earlier: read the migration guide. Version 3.7 removed commands and skill names, including learn, codebase-recon and swarm; their current owners are memory, research and agent-native. See the 3.7 release notes.

Skill installation does not install tool dependencies:

Skill	Needs	Why
rpi	ao, conditional	delegates exact-subject checks to Validate; only persists verdict.v2 when requested
plan	ao, conditional	runs ao provenance snapshot-intent with an explicit evidence root when the intent source is not durable
implement	ao, conditional	at an integration boundary whose changed paths affect bound evidence, runs ao provenance evidence-orphans
validate	ao, optional	with ao, derives exact subject identity from a content manifest and uses ao provenance store-verdict when persistence is requested; without it, names the commit and changed paths
council	ao, optional	with ao, subject_digest is the canonical_manifest_digest from ao provenance manifest; without it, a sha256 over the subject's repo-relative files or its text
research	ao, conditional	inspect selected goal measurements with ao goals or evidence-store facts with ao status
using-gc	ao	rig prep runs ao gc prepare and ao gc check
doc	ao, optional	a requested continuity handoff may use ao session handoff/rehydrate
reverse-engineer	python3	Phase 1's mechanical teardown runs scripts/reverse_engineer.py
skill-builder	ao 3.9 or later outside a source checkout, Go inside one; python3, conditional	build, check, heal and audit run through ao skills; build (any mode) and heal's fix mode refuse with exit 2 outside an AgentOps source checkout (no scripts/generate-skill-mesh.py, as in a plugin install); build without and heal's fix mode run that script, and needs PyYAML

Memory can read reviewed .context/ notes with ordinary filesystem tools; no ao or Beads is needed. See this repo's context map.

Adding notes requires authorized sources and fresh review of factual support and disclosure before Git admission. Drafts and evidence stay inline in the reply or in storage outside Git that the caller names. These procedures do not enforce access permissions or prove that saved notes improve later work. See Memory's storage rules.

The Claude Code plugin includes PreToolUse guards for private tracker data in commits, manual provenance-ledger edits and installed-skill overwrites. Installing only ao does not add hooks; other paths can opt in through the native hook installer. Read-budget guards, Codex roles and trusted Codex hooks have separate setup.

Disable Claude's plugin with /plugin disable agentops. Remove it with claude plugin uninstall agentops@agentops-marketplace; for Codex, use codex plugin remove agentops@agentops-marketplace; for npx installs, use npx skills@latest remove.

AgentOps is the operations layer for agentic engineering. Its federated integration graph connects evidence while Git owns content, the tracker owns work and the coding runtime or selected factory owns execution. Your repository owns delivery.

Native execution requires zero AgentOps skills. RPI, Gas City and Agentic Coding Flywheel are optional; their completion reports do not replace required checks or judgment.

On request, Validate can save verdict.v2 with exact content, checked scope and evidence. New proof belongs in selected, protected storage outside Git; existing evidence is preserved.

Read the architecture, operating contract and storage rules.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	What to check
plugin is not recognized	Update your agent to a version with plugin support
A skill is missing	Check its inventory or picker, then start a new session
ao is not found	Install the CLI and check PATH; Go installs usually use $(go env GOPATH)/bin
A skill needs another tool	Check its dependencies in the installation guide
An old skill name fails	Check the migration guide and stale copies

Report a reproducible issue with your runtime version, install method, command or prompt, and observed result. Share only evidence you are authorized to disclose.

Limits

Skills guide agents; installation alone does not enforce their instructions. A green test suite or an agreeing model can still miss a defect. Missing proof stays NOT_PROVEN. Saving notes does not establish improved outcomes or automatic knowledge compounding. See product evidence and limits.

FAQ

Do I need the CLI, an orchestrator or several agents?

No. Start with one coding agent and a skill such as Research, Test or Refactor. Use checks and CI for ordinary changes. Obtain one fresh, author-distinct judgment when requested, hard to undo, or uncovered by a deterministic check. The Validate skill requires ao; native independent review does not.

Must the reviewer use another model provider?

No. The default is a fresh context from the author's model family. Cross-model review is an explicit choice; independence still matters.

Must durable work live in Git?

No. Keep source in Git, handoffs in your tracker and requested proof in protected external storage, following each owner's access and retention rules.

Beyond AgentOps

Start with one agent and a paved path. When work needs several agents, a factory can add scheduling, coordination and runtime supervision. Install AgentOps skills into its agent runtimes to carry the same behavior, testing and review practices into each task. The factory runs the agents; your checks and any required independent judgment establish what the result proves.

Gas City

Gas City, from the organization behind Beads, provides configurable building blocks for multi-agent software factories: runtime providers, work routing, workflow formulas, packs and supervision. AgentOps ships a Gas City adapter and an executor integration pack. Use the adapter to work through Gas City's native coordinator and observe its runs; workers can use AgentOps skills for implementation, tests and validation.

Agentic Coding Flywheel

Agentic Coding Flywheel is Jeffrey Emanuel's (Dicklesworthstone) ecosystem of tools and workflows for operating coding agents. Its setup project assembles a multi-agent development environment. You can also adopt individual tools alongside AgentOps:

Need	Upstream tool	How it fits
Block covered destructive shell operations	Destructive Command Guard (dcg)	Checks commands before execution through its configured integration. Adds mechanical protection alongside agent guidance.
Find an earlier investigation or solution	Coding Agent Session Search (cass)	Indexes and searches agent session histories. Retrieve relevant episodes as evidence for Memory or a new investigation.
Turn session evidence into reusable skills	Meta Skill (ms)	Can mine selected CASS sessions into skill candidates with source links. Review the guidance and test it on another task before relying on it.

For example, use CASS to find how a recurring migration failure was resolved. Use Memory to examine the supported lesson and curate project context. If the method belongs in a repeatable path, Skill Builder can help package it and Skill Eval can measure whether it helps later work. This connects session history to guidance you can inspect and improve.

Gas City, the Flywheel and these tools are independent projects. AgentOps ships its own Gas City adapter and pack; install external tools and their skills from their authors. Follow their native workflows, integrations and distribution terms.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome: documentation fixes, reproducible bug reports, tests, CLI improvements and skills. Read the contribution guide; to work on skills from a checkout, link them with ao skills link.

Licensed under Apache-2.0.