decapod 0.37.9

Decapod is a Rust-built governance runtime for AI agents: repo-native state, enforced workflow, proof gates, safe coordination.
Documentation

Why Decapod 🧠

AI coding agents can write code fast. Shipping it safely is the hard part.

Decapod gives agents a consistent operational contract: guided execution, enforceable boundaries, and auditable completion signals. It replaces "looks done" with explicit outcomes.

Decapod is invoked by agents; it never runs in the background. It is a single executable binary that provides deterministic primitives:

  • Retrieve canon (constitution .md fragments) as context.
  • Provide authoritative schemas for structured state (todos, knowledge, decisions).
  • Run deterministic validation/proof gates to decide when work is truly done. Example gate: forbid direct pushes to protected branches — fails if the agent has unpushed commits on main.

AGENTS.md stays tiny (entrypoint). OVERRIDE.md handles local exceptions. Everything else is pulled just-in-time.

Traces: .decapod/data/traces.jsonl. Bindings: context.bindings. Architecture-agnostic (not coupled to a specific OS or CPU).

Recent independent research confirms this design direction: Evaluating AGENTS.md (Gloaguen et al., ETH SRI, 2026; AgentBench repo) found that LLM-generated context files tend to reduce agent performance while increasing cost by over 20 %; human-written minimal requirements can help slightly. Decapod was built independently and without knowledge of ETH SRI's AgentBench research or this paper.

Assurance Model ✅

Decapod is built around three execution outcomes:

  • Advisory: guidance toward the next high-value move.
  • Interlock: hard stops for unsafe or out-of-policy flow.
  • Attestation: structured evidence that completion criteria were met.

Operating Model ⚙️

Human Intent
    |
    v
AI Agent(s)  <---->  Decapod Runtime  <---->  Repository + Policy
                         |    |    |
                         |    |    +-- Interlock (enforced boundaries)
                         |    +------- Advisory (guided execution)
                         +------------ Attestation (verifiable outcomes)

Features ✨

  • Agent-native CLI and RPC surface for deterministic operation.
  • Guided project understanding through structured prompting.
  • Standards-aware execution aligned with project policy.
  • Workspace safety for isolated implementation flow.
  • Validation and completion gates with explicit pass/fail outcomes.
  • Multi-agent-ready orchestration surface for tooling integrations.

Getting Started 🚀

cargo install decapod
decapod init

Then use your agents as normal. Decapod works on your behalf from inside the agent.

Learn more about the embedded constitution via the CLI:

decapod docs show core/DECAPOD.md

Override constitution defaults with plain English in .decapod/OVERRIDE.md.

Contributing 🤝

git clone https://github.com/DecapodLabs/decapod
cd decapod
cargo build
cargo test
decapod validate

Documentation 📚

Support 💖

License 📄

MIT. See LICENSE.