Carryover

Status: alpha — v0.1.0 in pre-release.

What is Carryover?

Carryover is a long-lived local daemon that captures AI agent context from on-disk transcripts and republishes a structured handoff: task, open questions, next action, and a cumulative progress log. Your agent stays focused across session boundaries, tool switches, and compaction events — whether you're shipping a feature, mapping a competitive landscape, or drafting an investor memo. The bookkeeping happens locally so the agent itself never has to do the work.

Why does this exist?

AI agents already write a complete transcript of every session to disk — Claude Code as JSONL under ~/.claude/projects/, Codex CLI under ~/.codex/sessions/, Cursor as SQLite under VS Code's workspace storage, Aider as Markdown in the working tree, and so on. Yet every existing handoff tool asks the agent to summarize itself, write a markdown file, or call an MCP tool — work the agent has to perform inside its own context window.

Carryover takes a different path. The state is already on disk. A local daemon reads it, distills a bounded handoff, and writes it back where the next session — same tool or different — will pick it up. The agent never sees the bookkeeping, so the work happens without burning context.

That gives Carryover three properties no competitor has at once:

1. Capture happens without burning context. Hooks fire locally, the daemon reads transcripts directly, and the agent does no writing.
2. Restore is bounded. A structured handoff (task, progress log, next action) is the contract. Older state lives in the local SQLite ledger, not in the agent's prompt.
3. It works across tools. Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Copilot, Windsurf, and Aider all converge on the same AGENTS.md rail.

Architecture

A long-lived user daemon (carryoverd) started by launchd or systemd watches each tool's transcript directory and exposes a local hook endpoint at localhost:47823. Captured state flows through a normalizer and a deterministic distiller (regex, AST via tree-sitter, git metadata) into a SQLite ledger at ~/.carryover/ledger.sqlite, then out to a structured handoff at ~/.carryover/handoff.md and a [CARRYOVER] block inside the project's AGENTS.md.

For the full design — including the confirmed transcript-location matrix, the per-tool hook event matrix, the restore paths, and the comparison against existing tools — see ARCHITECTURE.md.

Install

Pick whichever fits your stack. All three install commands result in the same carryoverd binary on your $PATH.

Linux

# npm — works for any tool whose users already have Node installed
npm install -g carryover

# OR Cargo — for Rust developers who already have it
cargo install carryover

macOS

# Homebrew (recommended)
brew install carryover-dev/tap/carryover

# OR npm — works if you already have Node installed
npm install -g carryover

macOS first-run note — v0.1 binaries are signed with cosign (free, transparent, open-source) but not with an Apple Developer ID. Gatekeeper may refuse to launch on first run. Strip the quarantine attribute once after install:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine $(which carryoverd)

Apple Developer ID notarization is on the v1.0 roadmap — we accept the one-time xattr step in exchange for keeping the project free and signed via a public, transparent log. If you install via npm on macOS the postinstall script prints this same advisory automatically.

Then run the one-time setup

carryoverd install

A single TUI question: "Which AI agents do you use?" — pre-checked with whatever Carryover detects on disk. Confirm and the daemon registers itself with systemd-user (on Linux), writes hook stubs into each tool's settings, and starts watching transcripts.

macOS: launchd autostart is on the v0.2 roadmap. After carryoverd install, start the daemon manually:

carryoverd start        # keep this terminal open, or…
carryoverd start &      # …run it in the background

carryoverd status      # see what's installed and recent events
carryoverd refresh     # re-detect tools after a tool upgrade
carryoverd uninstall   # remove hooks; ledger preserved by default (--purge to wipe)

Tip — resuming a session: Carryover writes a pointer block into your project's AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md. The AI reads it automatically at the start of a new conversation. To trigger it, open a new session and say something like "let's start", "continue", or "what's next" — that's enough for Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex to read the handoff and ask where you left off. Just saying "hi" won't trigger it.

Tip — already in a chat: A long-running Cursor/Claude/Codex window won't re-read the pointer mid-conversation. Carryover keeps writing fresh updates to .carryover/handoff.md as you work, but the AI in that window doesn't see them until you tell it to. To pull in the latest state, just say "read .carryover/handoff.md" or "check the carryover handoff for context" — the AI will load the file and pick up everything that happened since the chat started, including work from your other tools.

What works in v0.1

What's deferred to v0.2+

• Aider, Copilot, Windsurf, Gemini CLI adapters (v0.2)
• brief and silent resume modes — v0.1 ships only ask (v0.3)
• Encryption-at-rest on the SQLite ledger (v0.5)
• Apple Developer ID + notarization (v1.0 — until then, xattr is the workaround)
• Windows support
• Team-shared / sync features
• GUI

Verification

Every release artifact is signed with cosign keyless OIDC tied to this exact workflow path in this repository. To verify a downloaded tarball:

# Replace <ASSET> with the tarball name, e.g. carryoverd-v0.1.0-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
cosign verify-blob \
  --certificate "<ASSET>.pem" \
  --signature "<ASSET>.sig" \
  --certificate-identity-regexp "^https://github.com/carryover-dev/carryover/.github/workflows/release\.yml@refs/tags/v.*" \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer "https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com" \
  "<ASSET>"

SHA256SUMS covers every tarball on the release page; npm install -g carryover enforces this hash automatically and refuses to install a mismatched binary.

Where to get help

• Bugs and feature requests — open a GitHub issue using the templates in .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/.
• Design discussion and questions — GitHub Discussions is the single focal point at launch. Chat platforms will be added only when traffic exceeds maintainer bandwidth.
• Security disclosures — see SECURITY.md. Do not file public issues for security reports.

The maintainer responds to new issues within seven days. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full commitment.

Who is Carryover for?

Three target users, stated plainly:

• I think Carryover would really help developers who switch between Cursor, Claude Code, and Codex on the same project, who are trying to carry intent and recent decisions across tools without manually re-explaining the state.
• I think Carryover would really help founders running long sessions on strategy, fundraising, market research, or competitive analysis with Claude Code, who are trying to keep weeks of context across PreCompact and tool restarts without losing the thread.
• I think Carryover would really help researchers and long-form writers using AI agents for synthesis, drafting, and source-tracking, who are trying to preserve outlines, decisions, and reference lists across session boundaries.

Project links

• Architecture
• Vision
• Roadmap
• Governance
• Contributing
• Code of Conduct
• Security policy
• Changelog
• License (Apache 2.0)