ropeshift
A free, fair-source, self-hosted software factory for people who run coding agents in parallel.
Alpha, v0.1.0-alpha.14 (opens in a new tab)
Solo mode works on macOS and Linux. Expect breaking changes before 1.0.0.
It turns planned work into verified outcomes with supervised agents, and it is designed to interrupt a person only when a person is needed. This release drives Claude Code on one machine.
brew install bkuberek/tap/ropeshiftOr use the install script, or a .deb or .rpm package.
The problem
- Starting several agent sessions is easy. Keeping them productive for hours is not.
- Two sessions can take the same work, and nobody notices until a branch is damaged.
- Agents stop to ask questions, often the same ones, and sessions sit idle waiting for a person.
- Agents do not share one view of the goals, requirements, and past decisions.
- There is no single place to see what is planned, running, stuck, or finished.
How work flows
In this release, work moves through these seven steps on one machine.
Rope yards laid one colored yarn into a rope to mark it. Here that yarn is you, and it touches the lane only at the last rung.
- Few interruptions
- The north-star metric is human interruptions per completed work order, and
ropeshift measuresprints it beside the measures that keep it honest. - Never ask twice
- Lanes with the same open question attach to it, and every one of them hears the one answer.
- No assumed roles
- Every member can answer any question and make any decision.
- Work arrives from repository files or directly in the ledger.Designed, not built yet: reading it from a tracker
- A person or a planning agent writes a plan and its contracts.
- Contract review collects every question it can find, in one batch. Work becomes ready only when it passes a definition of ready.
- An orchestrator claims ready work and starts a lane: one writer in one worktree.
- When a lane has a question, it climbs a ladder, and a person is the last rung.
- Existing decisions
- Open questions
- A decision within policy
- A recorded assumption
- A person
- A lane that truly cannot proceed parks. It saves its work, stops its process so it uses no quota, and resumes when the answer arrives.
- The lane ends with a typed outcome, artifacts, and check results, and a member accepts the work or sends it back for rework.Designed, not built yet: writing the result back to a tracker
The four parts
Each part is built for solo mode in this release.
The rope reads left to right: loose yarns, then laid rope. This page marks each part the same way.
- Built in v0.1.0-alpha.14
- Laid: twisted and finished. It works in this release.
- Designed, not built yet
- Loose: not spun in yet. It is part of the design.
- Built in v0.1.0-alpha.14
Work ledger
The system of record for execution, in a local SQLite ledger per project.
- Claims, outcomes, decisions, and evidence
- Many isolated projects per installation
- No tracker required
- Built in v0.1.0-alpha.14
Planning and decisions
A planning session turns your answers into requirements, documents, milestones, contracts, and work orders, approved as one plan.
- Adopt an existing project
- Contract review before work starts
- Every decision searchable, with its rationale
- Built in v0.1.0-alpha.14
Supervised agents
One orchestrator per machine pulls work, and a deterministic daemon keeps each Claude Code session healthy.
- A lost claim stops its writer
- A verdict on every review criterion
- Merges at the authority level you choose
- Built in v0.1.0-alpha.14
Web UI
The web UI shows every project in the installation, on loopback, with
ropeshift topbeside it in a terminal.- Needs you, with confirmation cards
- Roadmap, plans, and plan approval
- Lanes, measures, and conversations
Designed, not built yet: reading work from an issue tracker and writing results back to it, workers on more than one machine, and drivers for Codex and opencode
See it
The web UI is built into the binary, and its first view puts what waits for a person first.
Works with your tools
Your tools stay. No particular tracker or process is required, and ropeshift works with no tracker at all. It wraps agent CLIs and never replaces them, and it is not a model client.
| Built in v0.1.0-alpha.14 | Designed, not built yet | |
|---|---|---|
| Agents | Claude Code, qualified on 2.1.316, 2.1.317, and 2.1.319 | Codex, opencode, and other agent CLIs |
| Work | Repository files, and work recorded directly in the ledger | GitHub Issues and Projects, Jira, Linear, Notion, YouTrack, and Odoo Projects, with results written back |
| Knowledge | Documents in your repositories | Confluence and Notion |
| Code | Git repositories on this machine, with one worktree per lane, and GitHub pull requests through the gh CLI you signed in to, or merging into the base branch with git | Bitbucket pull requests |
Ways to run it
Team size changes configuration, not concepts, and every mode is designed to use the same versioned API.
- Built in v0.1.0-alpha.14
Solo
One binary on one machine, with no Docker, no account, and no network connection of its own.
Store: SQLite
- Designed, not built yet
Self-hosted group
Docker Compose on a LAN or tailnet, with workers that dial out, so laptops open no inbound ports.
Store: Postgres
- Designed, not built yet
Cluster
A Helm chart and Terraform modules in your own cloud.
Store: Postgres
Your logins stay yours
Each agent CLI is installed and signed in on each worker, through its vendor's own flow. Ropeshift never reads, stores, relays, or proxies agent credentials.
A worker that uses a subscription is bound to the person who signed in, and shared workers use API keys.
Install the alpha
brew install bkuberek/tap/ropeshiftcurl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bkuberek/ropeshift/main/install.sh | sh- Read the release notes for v0.1.0-alpha.14 (opens in a new tab)
- Read the license (opens in a new tab)
Ropeshift is free and fair source under the Functional Source License, FSL-1.1-ALv2. Each version also becomes available under Apache-2.0 two years after its release. Outside code contributions are not open yet.
Support ropeshift
Ropeshift is free to use. If it helps your work, you can support its development with a one-time contribution or a monthly sponsorship.