Decapod Documentation

Decapod is a daemonless, repo-native governance kernel for AI coding agents. It turns human intent into bounded, durable, and proof-backed agent work.

This book explains the product, its execution model, and the repository contracts used by humans, agents, and reviewers.

🚀 Getting Started

• Introduction: What is Decapod? Learn about the governance gap and the core pillars of repo-native agent control.
• Quickstart: Install, initialize, and run your first agent handshake and validation in under five minutes.
• Mental Model: Understand how agents, tasks, sessions, and workspaces interact.
• Configuration: Structure your repository config, enable cloud backends, and configure containerization.

🔄 Governed Workflows

Learn how agents move through the lifecycle of planning, execution, validation, and completion.

• Single-Agent Workflows: The lifecycle of an agent claim, ensure, validate, and finish loop.
• Multi-Agent Workflows: Handling concurrent agents, task claiming, and locking database state.
• Workspace Isolation: Setting up isolated Git worktrees and Docker containers to run tasks securely.
• External Trackers: Integrating Decapod with Jira, Linear, or GitHub Issues.

💡 Core Concepts

Deep dive into the architecture and mechanisms that make Decapod unique.

• Agent-First Architecture: Why Decapod is designed to be called directly at agent "inference pressure points".
• Explicit Intent: Converting ambiguous prompts into concrete, versioned specifications.
• Workspace Sandboxing: How isolated execution layers keep your primary branches clean and safe.
• Proof & Validation: Verifying correctness programmatically through policy evaluation instead of agent self-reporting.
• Common Questions: Short architectural answers about agents, specifications, daemonless execution, trackers, and proof-backed completion.
• Repository Constitution: Setting the global guidelines that steer agent behavior.
• Config Overrides: Project-specific adjustments to constitutional guidelines.
• Model Context Protocol (MCP): Navigating Decapod tools through structured agent protocols.

📖 Reference Manual

Hard specifications, command lists, configuration schemas, and error codes.

• Config Specification (config.toml): Key-value reference for repo-level policy control.
• CLI Reference: Detailed breakdown of commands and options (init, validate, session, todo, decide).
• Error Reference: Decapod exit codes, validator failures, and self-healing instructions.
• Artifact Reference: Layout and schema of generated intent, handshake, and validation specs.

🛠️ Developer Resources

To contribute or integrate Decapod into your platform:

• Read the Contributing Guidelines.
• Visit the main GitHub Repository: DecapodLabs/decapod