prikk-0.18.4 is not a library.

Prikk

Prikk is a standalone distributed version control system built around block-oriented patch theory.

Prikk uses a native .prikk/ repository format. It is not a Git wrapper and does not use .git/ as a storage backend. The project aims to combine patch-based semantic precision with practical performance by sealing history into immutable blocks and keeping expensive patch reasoning bounded to active work.

Project Goals

Prikk is designed to be:

easy to use for ordinary local development workflows;
safe and secure by default, with role-bound signatures and fail-closed validation;
resilient against corruption, interrupted operations, and lost mutable pointers;
flexible enough for local, peer, and future hosted workflows;
fast for long-lived repositories by separating active patch reasoning from sealed block history;
explainable when patch reasoning cannot prove a safe result.

Current Status

Latest released implementation: 0.18.4, adding branch and tag surfaces, multi-commit queuing, commit-path caching, and a correctness fix for repeated text edits.

Next increment candidates are tracked in ROADMAP.md.

This is an early implementation suitable for architecture review, experimentation, and contribution. Do not use Prikk as the sole store for important project history yet. The repository format and command surface are still evolving, and future releases may require migration. See the release, versioning, and compatibility reference for the pre-1.0 compatibility and official-release boundary.

The local core can initialize a repository, author signed patches, seal them into blocks, inspect history, verify integrity, diagnose common repository issues, perform safe checkout planning and materialization for the supported subset, and display read-only merge evidence and merge plans for explicit sealed candidates.

Good Fit

Prikk may be a good match if you are:

evaluating next-generation VCS architecture;
interested in patch theory, commutation, conflict evidence, or signed history;
building tools that need verifiable local history and conservative recovery behavior;
contributing to a Rust implementation of a correctness-sensitive CLI and storage system;
reviewing security, durability, and publication-trust boundaries.

Not a Good Fit Yet

Prikk is not yet the right tool if you need:

a production replacement for Git;
stable repository-format compatibility;
Git object compatibility or transparent Git interoperability;
hosted forge workflows, remotes, or sync;
complete branch management, tags, semantic merge, or merge execution;
plugin/audit execution, attestations, or automated publication controls;
mature key lifecycle features such as revocation, rotation, hardware signing, or thresholds.

Core Ideas

Patch: an atomic logical change with ordered operations and an AUTHOR signature.
Block: an immutable sealed collection of patches; blocks are the scalability boundary.
Ref state: signed reference state; ref files are pointers, not the root of trust.
Ref update: append-only publication evidence for a ref transition.
WAL: active signed patch envelopes before sealing.
Repository layout: .prikk/ stores native Prikk objects, refs, active WAL state, and local trust data; see the repository layout reference.
Concurrency and locking: local lock files guard active-session and ref publication writes; see the concurrency and locking reference.
Path safety: repository paths use a conservative validated subset; see the path and worktree safety reference.
Attestation: future audit/policy evidence targeting blocks without defining block identity.

Install

Prebuilt binary, no Rust toolchain required — Linux (x86_64/aarch64) only for now:

cargo binstall prikk

Or download directly from the release page, verify the attached .sha256 checksum, and extract. Both target archives contain the prikk binary, LICENSE, and a .build-info.txt recording the exact toolchain and command used to build it — reproducible from the tag with cargo build -p prikk --release --target <triple> --locked.

Release authority. Prebuilt binaries carry no more signer authority than the source tarball already carries none of — release-signers.toml is empty and fail-closed, so no release, including its attached binaries, passes the DC-35 signer-authority audit yet. A checksum proves integrity of transport, not authority of origin; see the release-compatibility reference.

From crates.io, requires a Rust toolchain:

cargo install prikk

Repository mutation is Linux-only; read-only commands build and run on macOS and Windows too (verify, log, status, doctor, checkout --plan-only/--snapshot-plan/--patch-plan/ --patch-delete-plan, merge-evidence, merge-plan, inverse-plan, rollback-preview, rollback-draft-verify, branch [list], tag [list] — the full, durable list, including one capability-gap caveat, is in the platform support reference). This closes a defect fixed by DC-71: prikk-store previously failed to compile at all off Linux due to inconsistently #[cfg(target_os = "linux")]-gated imports; CI now builds and actually runs the read-only command set against a real repository on GitHub's windows-latest and macos-latest runners on every change, so this cannot silently rot again. Prebuilt binaries remain Linux-only (§ Install above) — that is a separate, unstarted increment.

To build from a clone instead — the path to use when working on prikk itself:

cargo build -p prikk && export PATH="$PWD/target/debug:$PATH"

Quick Start

mkdir -p ./sample-repo && cd ./sample-repo
prikk init .

export PRIKK_AUTHOR_KEY_ID="dev-author"
export PRIKK_AUTHOR_SEED="00112233445566778899aabbccddeeff00112233445566778899aabbccddeeff"
export PRIKK_MAINTAINER_KEY_ID="dev-maintainer"
export PRIKK_MAINTAINER_SEED="111122223333444455556666777788889999aaaabbbbccccddddeeeeffff0000"

prikk trust maintainer add \
  --key-id "$PRIKK_MAINTAINER_KEY_ID" \
  --public-key "a00899dfd3357aee69729405913f9324dfc033cec04a2215239eda64ae6d9d91"

echo "hello prikk" > readme.txt
prikk commit -m "genesis"
prikk seal --allow-no-audit

prikk log
prikk verify
prikk doctor

Ref names are fully qualified

branch create, branch close, and tag create take a fully-qualified ref — heads/topic, not topic; tags/v1, not v1. A bare name is rejected: invalid name: ref topic is not a local branch ref; expected heads/<name>. There is no current-branch pointer and no branch switch, so every command that targets a ref resolves --ref explicitly.

Committing more than once before sealing

commit may run repeatedly without an intervening seal; the active session queues the patches and seal batches them into one block. status reports the queue — queued patches: 2 targeting heads/main. Committing and sealing one-for-one still works exactly as before; nothing forces accumulation.

Two environment variables bound the queue, both fail-closed on a malformed value:

PRIKK_ACTIVE_PATCH_WARN — warn at this many queued patches (default 800)
PRIKK_ACTIVE_PATCH_LIMIT — refuse further commits at this many (default 1000)

The limit is checked before any write, so a refused commit leaves no partial state.

For a fresh repository, the first commit authors a genesis patch set and the first seal publishes a Root block on heads/main. The current key-input mechanism is intentionally minimal: seeds are passed through environment variables for local experimentation, not as a complete key-management system. The sample values above are public examples and must never be used for real signing. See the security and signing setup guide for the current setup boundary.

Useful Commands

prikk init [path]
prikk trust maintainer add --key-id ID --public-key HEX
prikk commit [--ref heads/<branch>] -m <message>
prikk seal --allow-no-audit [--ref heads/<branch>]
prikk status
prikk log [path] [--limit N] [--ref REF]
prikk checkout --plan-only [path] [--ref REF]
prikk checkout --snapshot-plan [path] [--ref REF]
prikk checkout --snapshot-materialize [path] [--ref REF]
prikk checkout --patch-plan [path] [--ref REF]
prikk checkout --patch-materialize [path] [--ref REF]
prikk checkout --patch-delete-plan [path] [--ref REF]
prikk checkout --patch-materialize-delete [path] [--ref REF]
prikk merge-evidence --baseline-block ID (--left-block ID|--left-ref REF) (--right-block ID|--right-ref REF) [path]
prikk merge-plan --baseline-block ID (--left-block ID|--left-ref REF) (--right-block ID|--right-ref REF) [path]
prikk inverse-plan [path] [--ref REF]
prikk rollback-preview [path] [--ref REF]
prikk rollback-draft --append-inverse [path] [--ref REF] -m <message>
prikk rollback-draft-verify [path] [--ref REF]

prikk branch [list] [--all]
prikk branch create heads/<name> [--from REF]
prikk branch close heads/<name>
prikk tag [list]
prikk tag create tags/<name> --target <ref|block> [-m <message>]
prikk worktree-status [path] [--ref REF]
prikk verify [path]
prikk doctor [path]
prikk doctor [path] --repair-wal-tail

Project Structure

crates/ — Rust workspace crates for the CLI, object model, crypto, repository store, replay semantics, hash primitives, and shared errors.
docs/ — mdBook documentation.
release/ — release-policy schemas and review fixtures; root release-signers.toml is the fail-closed official signer allowlist.
rfcs/ — design records and lifecycle state. rfcs/done/000-rfc-lifecycle-policy.md defines how proposed/, accepted/, done/, archive/, and handoffs/ are used.
ROADMAP.md — current release and upcoming theme summary.
CHANGELOG.md — released changes.

Development Gates

Before proposing changes, run the relevant subset of:

cargo fmt --all -- --check
cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets --all-features --locked -- -D warnings
cargo test --workspace --locked

In restricted environments where the default temporary directory is read-only, use a workspace-local temporary directory for integration tests:

mkdir -p target/tmp
TMPDIR="$PWD/target/tmp" cargo test --workspace --locked

More Detail

The roadmap, RFCs, and mdBook docs are the best entry points for design details:

prikk 0.18.4