Detent

detent.build — what Detent is, how it works, and how to install it.

Start With AI

Hi, welcome to Detent. If you are reading this as a human, pause here and paste the prompt below into Codex or Claude Code. Detent is meant to be driven from the top down by AI agents, so the fastest way to get moving is to let an agent inspect the repo, interrogate the onboarding runbook, and guide you through the right setup path. You can keep reading by hand too; nobody will revoke your keyboard.

You are onboarding Detent with me. Treat this as an AI-driven project, not a
manual README skim.

Treat https://github.com/digitaldrywood/detent as the canonical Detent source
repository. Do not assume the current working directory is the Detent source
checkout or the target repository being onboarded. Use GitHub as the
first-class Detent documentation source when a verified local checkout is
absent, stale, or not desired. Do not clone Detent by default; cloning is only
an optional fallback when remote reads are unavailable or I explicitly ask for a
local source checkout. Keep the Detent source repository separate from any
target repository being onboarded; Detent may be a reference/source repository,
not the target.

Pin the Detent docs to a concrete canonical commit before relying on them. Run
`DETENT_DOCS_COMMIT="$(gh api repos/digitaldrywood/detent/git/ref/heads/main --jq '.object.sha')"`
and record `DETENT_DOCS_ACCESS_METHOD=github_api`,
`DETENT_DOCS_REPOSITORY=digitaldrywood/detent`, `DETENT_DOCS_REF=main`, and
`DETENT_DOCS_COMMIT` in the initial evidence packet. Also run
`detent --format json version` when the binary is available and report installed
binary version, binary commit, binary build date, and
`DETENT_BINARY_MATCHES_CANONICAL` against `DETENT_DOCS_COMMIT`. If a verified
local Detent checkout is present, you may additionally set `DETENT_SOURCE_ROOT`
and run `git -C "$DETENT_SOURCE_ROOT" fetch origin main:refs/remotes/origin/main`,
`git -C "$DETENT_SOURCE_ROOT" rev-parse HEAD`, and
`git -C "$DETENT_SOURCE_ROOT" rev-parse refs/remotes/origin/main`; report the
local source root, local `HEAD`, canonical `origin/main`, and
`DETENT_SOURCE_MATCHES_CANONICAL`. If the local checkout is absent, stale, or
cannot be proven current, read Detent docs from GitHub at `DETENT_DOCS_COMMIT`
instead of cloning or relying on local files.

From the pinned Detent documentation source, read README.md, AGENTS.md and
CLAUDE.md if present, docs/ONBOARDING.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, build and language
manifests, .github/workflows, install scripts, docs/templates, workflow
examples, and any existing WORKFLOW.md or global.yaml examples. Use
`gh api repos/digitaldrywood/detent/contents/<path>?ref="$DETENT_DOCS_COMMIT"`
or raw GitHub URLs pinned to the same commit. Detent can drive any project with
a clear workflow and validation gate, so use the repository evidence to
identify the stack, tools, and commands instead of starting from one language.
Do not inspect a target repository's
ProjectV2 boards, labels, issues, WORKFLOW.md, validation commands, or runtime
docs until the identity gate below is explicit and confirmed.

Use the pinned Detent documentation source's docs/ONBOARDING.md as the interrogation
guide. First determine which path applies: a new Detent install, an existing
Detent install that must be found and verified, or a new repository/project
being added to an existing Detent install. Distinguish reference repositories from the target repository being onboarded. In Phase 0.5, run
`detent onboarding draft-answers --output pretty` from the target checkout, or
pass `--target-source-root` if you are currently in the Detent source checkout.
When a local Detent checkout is available, also pass
`--detent-source-root "$DETENT_SOURCE_ROOT"` so the draft records source and
binary freshness evidence.
To write the candidate identity record, run
`detent onboarding draft-answers --answers "$ONBOARDING_DIR/answers.env" --write`.
Treat the draft as a candidate, not confirmation. The command should infer and
restate an identity candidate from the current git checkout before asking for
raw answer fields, using only identity-safe local evidence first: `pwd`,
`git rev-parse --show-toplevel`, `git remote get-url origin`, the Detent
documentation source identity, the installed Detent config path, and
registered project ids. If the current working directory is a GitHub checkout
and is not the canonical Detent source checkout, propose it as the target
candidate. If the current working directory is the Detent source checkout, do
not propose Detent as the target unless I explicitly say I am onboarding Detent
itself. Explain that the customer/workstream id is only a stable local
workstream id. Present the candidate in human-facing language first, then show
the `answers.env` representation. Set `IDENTITY_CONFIRMED=true` only after I
confirm the restatement, then run `detent onboarding validate-answers --answers "$ONBOARDING_DIR/answers.env" --phase identity`.
If I volunteer a status-source answer before identity is confirmed, such as
"use label for this repo", preserve it as a pending decision outside
`answers.env`. Restate it as pending in the conversation. For label mode, say:
"I have your status-source choice as label mode. I will keep it pending until
the identity gate validates, then append GITHUB_MODE=label and run the decision
validator without asking again." Do not write `GITHUB_MODE` to `answers.env`
until the identity phase passes; after identity validation succeeds, append
`GITHUB_MODE=label` and run the decision validator without asking again. For
non-label modes, carry the selected `GITHUB_MODE` value the same way.
If the `detent` binary is not installed yet, follow the Detent source README's
Install path or Bootstrap On A New Machine steps 1-3 first, verify the binary
with `detent version`, and defer `detent onboarding validate-answers` until the
binary is available.

For an existing install, find and verify the detent binary, config path, running
service or dashboard, registered projects, GitHub auth, Codex auth, and
read-only doctor status with `detent doctor --port 0` before recommending
changes. Do not pass `--allow-write-probes` until the mutation gate passes and I
explicitly confirm mutation. For a new install, follow the bootstrap flow and
verify each step before moving on. For adding a project, treat existing
registered projects as examples only; do not reuse tracker mode, status
namespace, validation gate, dashboard bind, workspace root, scheduling priority,
auto-promote policy, review policy, or mutation scope unless I explicitly
accept that setting for this customer/project.

Present findings with evidence and ask only the next necessary human decisions.
Ask and record `GITHUB_MODE` explicitly after the identity phase and before
target-specific discovery; never infer ProjectV2, issue-field, or label mode
from existing projects. Recommendations can cite evidence, but they are not
selected answers. Before recommending review, auto-promotion, dependency
unblock, or merging settings, ask in plain English whether I want full
autopilot, a Human Review gate, or conservative/manual approval. If I ask for
maximum automation, map that to `DELIVERY_PROFILE=full_autopilot` and summarize
the behavior before showing `answers.env` fields. Do not recommend
`AUTO_PROMOTE_ENABLED=false` or stopping at Human Review unless I selected
review gate or conservative/manual; do not create, link, mutate, or delete GitHub Projects, issue fields, labels,
issues, PRs, `WORKFLOW.md`, or `global.yaml`, or dispatch agents, until Phase 2
answers are recorded in `answers.env`, `detent onboarding validate-answers`
passes for the selected phase, and I explicitly confirm the mutation step.
Defaults are recommendations only; never execute a defaulted GitHub or config
mutation without my confirmation.

A detent is the catch that holds a moving part at a fixed position until it is deliberately released — the click-stop on a dial, the notch on a ratchet. Detent holds each piece of work at a defined stop on your board and only lets it advance when a gate is cleared.

What is this

Detent is status-driven agentic work orchestration, shipped as a single Go binary, with code as its first proven domain. Today it can use a GitHub ProjectV2 board as the source of truth, or it can run boardless from a repository's GitHub issue Status field or repository status labels while Detent supplies the Kanban view. For every code issue you mark ready it creates an isolated Git worktree, dispatches a Codex coding agent against a workflow contract you wrote, runs your validation gate, opens a pull request, waits for review, and merges through a serialized train — with all of it live on a web dashboard and a terminal UI. The same status-to-gated-review-to-done shape is the trajectory for non-code work: validation gates are now pluggable, while non-git or non-PR deliverables remain follow-up work described in Execution Seams.

It is a system, not an agent. You specify the work — the issues, acceptance criteria, review gates, and merge rules — and Detent runs that process with rigor, isolation, and parallelism across many issues at once. The intelligence stays in your spec; the runtime supplies the discipline.

See it for real: Detent uses the same host-and-project configuration model to dispatch the agents that build Detent itself. The in-repository worked multi-project configuration shows that setup with complete, annotated, and sanitized files you can copy. Use Bootstrap On A New Machine to go from a bare machine to a running board. To onboard a repository, verify an existing install, or add a new project to an existing Detent host, use the agent-executable Project Onboarding runbook. For project settings, start with the complete configuration reference, the minimal example, or the annotated example.

Documentation

detent.build is the product site — the overview, the mechanism, and install paths. The reference below is the authoritative source for operating Detent; start there, then follow the focused document for the task at hand.

Get started

• Quick Start — configure a tracker and run Detent.
• Project Onboarding — agent-guided installation and project setup.
• Bootstrap a new machine — install prerequisites, templates, and service files.
• Configuration — project and host configuration, generated field reference, and sample files.

Operate Detent

• Concepts — connectors, board states, cancellation, review gates, and Kanban modes.
• Dependency workflows and merge train.
• Multi-project operation and machine-local workflow overlays.
• Webhook freshness and scheduled operations, including backlog_admission.
• Admission criteria and efficiency retrospection.
• Dashboard and APIs.

Reference and contribute

• Native Hub and Cloud architecture RFC — proposed native authority, portable execution, and launch contracts; current Hub API.
• CLI reference — exit codes, JSON errors, logging, and structured output.
• Release process.
• Development and contribution guide.
• Comparison, execution seams, and local models.

How it works

Configured GitHub status is the state machine; ProjectV2 board status, the boardless issue field, or repository status labels drive everything.

1. You write the contracts. Each project has a checked-in detent.yaml machine contract for tracker bindings, states, lifecycle policy, scheduling, retries, leases, and gates, plus a checked-in, portable WORKFLOW.md agent instruction contract. The prompt declares the project's required CI stage categories and the project-specific commands and check names that satisfy each category. Agents use that declaration when they change CI configuration or review a change: every required stage must exist and pass on the current pull request head. Optional gitignored detent.local.yaml and WORKFLOW.local.md files apply machine-specific configuration and agent direction, respectively, without changing the shared contracts.
2. You mark an issue Todo. Detent claims it, creates an isolated Git worktree from your source checkout, and dispatches a Codex agent with the contract — moving the issue to In Progress.
3. The agent works in its own branch, runs your validation gate, and opens or updates a PR. Review-gate workflows move the issue to Human Review; autopilot workflows leave it active with status: complete in the Workpad.
4. Gates decide. The workflow decides whether promotion to Merging waits in Human Review, waits in the active lane, requires a current-head automated PR review, or only needs linked PR + green CI + quiet time. Unresolved feedback sends it to Rework for another pass.
5. The merge train is serialized — one rebase, CI-watch, and merge at a time, so concurrent candidates never invalidate each other's CI — then the issue is Done.
6. One host, many repos. global.yaml runs multiple projects with weights, priority, pause, and fair scheduling. The web dashboard and terminal UI show live counts, running agents, token / budget / rate-limit state, and board flow.

The full state table and connector model are in Concepts, and merge-train configuration is in Merge Train.

How it's different

See How Detent compares to Symphony, Copilot, Cursor, Hermes, and OpenClaw.

From OpenAI's Symphony

Detent grew out of OpenAI's Symphony — the open SPEC.md for orchestrating Codex coding agents from a project board instead of supervising them interactively ("manage work, not agents"). Symphony ships as a spec plus an Elixir reference implementation that polls a Linear board. Detent takes that idea from spec to a shipped system, and diverges where it counts:

• A product, not a spec. One CGO-free Go binary for macOS, Linux, and Windows — go install, Homebrew, or copy a single file. No BEAM service to adapt, nothing to stand up.
• GitHub Projects v2, not Linear. Issues, status columns, priorities, labels, blockers, comments, and pull requests are the state machine.
• Multi-project from one host. global.yaml runs many repositories with weights, priority, pause, and fair scheduling.
• Explicit gates + a serialized merge train. CI, optional automated PR review criteria, and a one-at-a-time Merging lane, so what lands is always green.
• Pluggable validation gates. Code defaults use make check, CI, and automated review, while workflow authors can choose whether a command gate requires automated PR review or instead only waits for CI and the quiet window. A human approval-label gate is available when the workflow explicitly wants one.
• A real operator surface. A live dashboard (charts, trends, timelines, hover detail, budget and rate-limit state) and terminal UI, detent doctor preflight checks, cross-platform config discovery, and a GoReleaser pipeline.

From autonomy-first agents (OpenClaw, Hermes, …)

The difference is the interaction model. Autonomy-first tools center a persistent assistant: you talk to an agent, it keeps sessions and memory, picks its own tools, and acts on your behalf — you steer it and course-correct when it drifts. Detent inverts that. You write the issue first — scope, acceptance criteria, tests, dependency order, review policy, merge rule — and the board state decides when it is eligible. The runtime executes your contract in an isolated worktree and will not land the work until the gates you encoded pass. You are not steering an agent; you are running your own engineering process at scale.

Concretely: "add OAuth token rotation" in an autonomy-first tool starts as a prompt and becomes a supervision loop — review the plan, inspect partial edits, redirect when it misses migrations or tests. In Detent it starts as an issue that names the storage change, CLI behavior, migration, rollback, and tests; the worker produces a reviewable PR and does not merge until your gates are green.

The goal is not to replace engineers or hide work behind opaque behavior — it is to scale the judgment of engineers who already have a high bar. The system does not try to be smarter than you; it tries to be as disciplined as you would be, every time, in parallel.

Why these defaults

Two choices define Detent's footprint: GitHub Projects as the board and Codex as the coding agent. Both are deliberate.

Why GitHub Projects, not Linear

The reference design Detent grew from polls a Linear board while code, pull requests, and CI live in GitHub — two systems for one unit of work. That split forces you to map Linear issue IDs onto GitHub PR numbers and to read discussion in two places: planning comments in Linear, review comments in GitHub. Detent puts the whole state machine in one system. A GitHub Project is the board; its issues are the work items, its pull requests are the deliverables, and its comments and reviews are where every conversation happens. One ID space, one place to look.

It is also cheaper at the scale where orchestration matters:

• Cost. GitHub Projects has no per-seat charge and ships with repositories most teams already pay for. Linear's Business plan is $16/user/month — about $9,600/year at 50 seats — and its free tier is capped.
• API headroom. Authenticated GitHub REST allows 5,000 requests/hour (more for GitHub Apps); Linear allows 1,500 requests/hour against a complexity budget. A poller driving many repositories wants the larger ceiling.

Why Codex, not Claude

Detent dispatches agents non-interactively, headless, many at once. The important question is how that mode is metered.

• A ChatGPT plan (Plus, Pro, Business) covers Codex CLI usage including scripted codex exec automation, billed against the subscription you already have.
• Claude Code keeps interactive terminal and IDE use on subscription usage limits. Effective June 15, 2026, Anthropic moves headless claude -p, the Agent SDK, Claude Code GitHub Actions, and third-party Agent SDK apps to a separate monthly Agent SDK credit. That credit is per-user, does not roll over, and overages move to usage credits at standard API rates when enabled.

For an orchestrator that runs agents around the clock in parallel, the Codex subscription is the default that makes the economics work. Detent still supports explicit backend routing, including Claude Code, so operators can choose a backend per role when the limits, auth mode, and isolation trade-offs fit that work.

Install

On Windows, use the package manager that already manages your developer tools. Use Winget when the Detent package is available from the Windows Package Manager community source:

winget install --id DigitalDrywood.Detent --source winget

Use Scoop when you want a user-local install managed from a Scoop bucket:

scoop bucket add digitaldrywood https://github.com/digitaldrywood/scoop-bucket
scoop install detent

Use the PowerShell installer for bootstrap, CI images, or machines where you do not want to configure a Windows package manager first:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/digitaldrywood/detent/main/install.ps1 | iex

The PowerShell installer downloads the Windows release archive, verifies the SHA-256 checksum, installs detent.exe to %LOCALAPPDATA%\detent\bin, and adds that directory to the user PATH. Set DETENT_INSTALL_DIR to override the install directory. Winget and Scoop installs also expose detent.exe on PATH; verify any Windows install with detent --version.

Install the latest Linux release with the shell installer:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/digitaldrywood/detent/main/install.sh | sh

The shell installer downloads the Linux release archive, verifies the SHA-256 checksum, installs detent to /usr/local/bin when writable or $HOME/.local/bin otherwise, and prints PATH guidance when the chosen install directory is not already on PATH. Set DETENT_INSTALL_DIR to override the install directory. Source checkouts can also run the repository-local shell installer:

./install.sh

Use a native Linux package when you want apt, dnf, rpm, or another system package workflow to own the binary, removal, and upgrades:

DETENT_VERSION=0.5.2 # release version without leading v
DETENT_ARCH=amd64 # or arm64
curl -LO "https://github.com/digitaldrywood/detent/releases/download/v${DETENT_VERSION}/detent_${DETENT_VERSION}_linux_${DETENT_ARCH}.deb"
sudo apt install "./detent_${DETENT_VERSION}_linux_${DETENT_ARCH}.deb"
detent --version

DETENT_VERSION=0.5.2 # release version without leading v
DETENT_ARCH=amd64 # or arm64
curl -LO "https://github.com/digitaldrywood/detent/releases/download/v${DETENT_VERSION}/detent_${DETENT_VERSION}_linux_${DETENT_ARCH}.rpm"
sudo rpm -Uvh "./detent_${DETENT_VERSION}_linux_${DETENT_ARCH}.rpm"
detent --version

Use the shell installer for a user-local install without sudo, for Linux distributions that do not use .deb or .rpm, or for bootstrap scripts that should fall back to go install when a release asset is unavailable.

Use Homebrew on macOS or Linux when you already manage CLI tools with Homebrew:

brew install digitaldrywood/tap/detent

Use Go on any platform when you want to build from source instead of using a release archive:

go install github.com/digitaldrywood/detent/cmd/detent@latest

After installing, check for updates with:

detent update --check

Release-installer installs can update with detent update; use detent update --yes for non-interactive automation and detent update --format json for machine-readable status. The legacy detent update --json flag remains supported. On Windows, replacement is staged and completes after the running detent.exe exits. Package-manager installs should be upgraded by the package manager:

winget upgrade --id DigitalDrywood.Detent
scoop update detent
brew upgrade digitaldrywood/tap/detent

Native Linux packages are owned by the system package manager; install a newer .deb with sudo apt install ./detent_<version>_linux_<arch>.deb, or a newer .rpm with sudo rpm -Uvh ./detent_<version>_linux_<arch>.rpm or the distro wrapper you normally use. Go-installed binaries offer an interactive choice: run go install github.com/digitaldrywood/detent/cmd/detent@latest, switch to the checksum-verified release binary, or abort. detent update --yes runs the Go install command for go-installed binaries; detent update --from-release switches the detected Go-installed binary to the release asset and pins future updates to release-binary management. Source builds still print the recommended command instead of overwriting the binary.

CI runs the Installer Smoke confidence job on Ubuntu and Windows against the current GitHub Release assets after merges to main, on release tags, on the nightly schedule, and from manual workflow dispatch. The job runs install.sh and install.ps1 in release mode, checks checksum output, confirms the requested install directory and installer lock metadata, then runs detent update --check and detent update --yes from the release-installer install.

Release self-updates verify SHA256 checksums fetched from GitHub releases. The checksum verifier supports detached minisign signature assets named <checksum>.minisig, but enforcement is gated until the binary embeds the pinned minisign public key for the release stream. Until that release signing key is provisioned in #337, update integrity still depends on GitHub TLS plus the published checksum file.

Requirements:

• Go 1.26 or newer when installing with go install or building from source.
• The OpenAI Codex CLI installed and signed in, so codex app-server runs on the host that dispatches agents. Detent drives every agent through this app-server. Verify with codex --version. To route selected work to a local Ollama model without Detent code changes, see Local Models With Codex And Ollama.
• The Claude Code CLI installed and signed in when routing selected roles to claude_code. Verify with claude --version. Detent does not store Claude credentials; it uses the ambient claude CLI login or the ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment visible to the Detent worker.
• The GitHub CLI (gh) for authentication and GitHub lookups (optional but assumed throughout this guide).
• A GitHub token for the selected tracker mode. ProjectV2 mode usually needs repo, read:org, read:project, and write project. Boardless issue-field mode needs repository issue access plus organization issue-field read access; classic PATs use repo and read:org.

History

Detent began as an Elixir/OTP implementation of OpenAI's Symphony — the open spec for orchestrating Codex agents from a project board — adapted from Symphony's Linear target to GitHub Projects v2. It is now a ground-up Go rewrite: one CGO-free binary instead of a BEAM service, plus multi-project orchestration, the gated merge train, a richer operator dashboard, detent doctor, Windows support, and a GoReleaser pipeline. That earlier Elixir implementation is archived.

License

Detent is released under the MIT license. See LICENSE.