Gest

Manage agent-generated artifacts and task backlogs alongside your project.

[!WARNING] Gest is in early development. Commands, file formats, and configuration may change without notice between releases.

Gest is a lightweight task and artifact tracker built for AI-assisted development. It structures agent-generated work into phased iterations with dependency tracking, so independent tasks can be dispatched to separate agents concurrently — turning sequential, single-context-window workflows into parallel execution pipelines.

Data is stored as plain files — TOML for tasks, Markdown with YAML frontmatter for artifacts — right inside your repo. No database, no server, no accounts.

Full documentation is available at https://gest.aaronmallen.dev.

Quick Start

gest init # initialize global store
gest task create "Implement auth middleware"
gest artifact create --source auth-spec.md
gest search "auth"

Use gest init --local to store data inside the repo (.gest/) instead of the global data directory.

Parallel Execution

The core problem gest solves: an AI agent produces a plan with 15-20 tasks, and you execute them one at a time in one context window. That's slow. Gest lets you decompose work into phased iterations where tasks in the same phase run concurrently:

# Phase 1 tasks run in parallel — no dependencies between them
gest task create "Add export data types" --phase 1
gest task create "Add CSV formatter" --phase 1
gest task create "Add JSON formatter" --phase 1

# Phase 2 waits for Phase 1
gest task create "Wire up CLI command" --phase 2

# Group into an iteration and visualize the plan
gest iteration create "Implement export command"
gest iteration add <iteration-id> <task-id>   # repeat for each task
gest iteration graph <iteration-id>

The iteration graph shows exactly which tasks can run now and which are waiting. Agents read the graph, pick up unblocked tasks, and mark them done — the remaining work automatically unblocks.

Agent Orchestration

Built-in orchestration commands let multiple agents claim and execute tasks concurrently without conflicts:

gest iteration list --has-available            # find iterations with claimable work
gest iteration next <id> --claim --agent bot1  # atomically claim the next task
gest iteration status <id> --json              # check progress across all phases
gest iteration advance <id>                    # move to the next phase

iteration next exits with code 2 when no tasks remain, so scripts can distinguish "idle" from "error".

Web Dashboard

Gest includes a built-in web dashboard for browsing and managing your project's tasks, artifacts, and iterations without leaving the browser. Run gest serve to start it:

gest serve                    # opens http://localhost:2300

The dashboard provides:

• Status overview — entity counts and status breakdown at a glance
• Task and artifact views — filter, search, and inspect with rendered Markdown
• Iteration detail — tasks grouped by phase with dependency visualization
• Kanban board — drag-and-drop columns mapped to task status
• Full-text search — find anything across tasks and artifacts

Commands

Run gest --help or gest <command> --help for full details.

Configuration

Gest loads configuration from global (~/.config/gest/) and project-level TOML files. Run gest config show to see the resolved configuration and its source files.

Installation

Quick Install (macOS and Linux)

curl -fsSL https://gest.aaronmallen.dev/install | sh

[!TIP] This installs gest to ~/.local/bin. Make sure it's in your PATH:

export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"

Pin a specific version or change the install directory:

GEST_VERSION=0.0.1 GEST_INSTALL_PATH=/usr/local/bin \
  curl -fsSL https://gest.aaronmallen.dev/install | sh

Cargo

cargo install gest

Or with cargo-binstall for a pre-built binary:

cargo binstall gest

Status

Early development. See docs for design documents and process guides.

License

MIT