Kata

型 · /ˈkɑːtɑː/ · noun - a choreographed pattern practiced repeatedly until perfected

kata.sh

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Kata Monorepo

This is the Kata monorepo for four active AI agent products:

• Kata CLI in apps/cli
• Kata Desktop in apps/desktop
• Kata Symphony in apps/symphony
• Kata Context in apps/context

The repo also contains shared packages that support the product apps.

Products

Product	Path	Use it for	Quick start
Kata CLI	apps/cli	Backend IO and setup CLI used by Kata skills for project planning/execution workflows	npm install -g @kata-sh/cli
Kata Desktop	apps/desktop	Native GUI for Pi agent sessions, workflow kanban, and Symphony operation	GitHub Releases
Kata Symphony	apps/symphony	Headless orchestrator: polls GitHub or Linear, dispatches parallel agent sessions, manages full PR lifecycle	cargo build --release
Kata Context	apps/context	Structural, semantic, and memory-based codebase understanding for AI coding agents	npx @kata/context

Kata CLI

Kata CLI is the backend IO and setup CLI for Kata Skills. It owns typed project, milestone, slice, task, and artifact operations while agent harnesses such as Pi and Symphony own chat and worker execution.

Quick start:

npm install -g @kata-sh/cli
kata setup --pi

For local development:

pnpm --dir apps/cli run build
pnpm --dir apps/cli run test

Use Kata CLI when you want:

• portable Kata Skills installable into multiple harnesses
• durable backend operations through GitHub Projects v2 or Linear
• typed backend operations for planning, execution, verification, progress, and milestone completion

Read more in apps/cli/README.md.

Kata Desktop

Kata Desktop is a native Electron app for Pi agent sessions. It provides a visual chat shell, workspace-scoped sessions, provider settings, workflow kanban, and Symphony controls. Desktop bundles Pi for RPC chat, Kata CLI for backend IO used by Kata skills, the Kata skill bundle, and Symphony.

Quick start:

cd apps/desktop
pnpm run desktop:dev

For a packaged macOS build:

cd apps/desktop
pnpm run desktop:dist:mac

Use Kata Desktop when you want:

• a visual interface for Pi agent sessions
• workspace-scoped session history and settings
• workflow kanban and Symphony controls in one app

Read more in apps/desktop/README.md.

Kata Symphony

Kata Symphony is a headless orchestrator that polls a GitHub Projects v2 board or Linear project for candidate issues and dispatches parallel agent sessions to work on them autonomously. It manages the full ticket lifecycle - from Todo through implementation, PR creation, automated code review, human review, and merge - with multi-turn sessions, real-time event streaming, and a live HTTP dashboard.

Quick start:

cd apps/symphony
cargo build --release

cd /path/to/your/repo
/path/to/kata/apps/symphony/target/release/symphony init
$EDITOR .symphony/WORKFLOW.md
$EDITOR .symphony/prompts/repo.md

GH_TOKEN=github_pat_... /path/to/kata/apps/symphony/target/release/symphony --port 8080
# or: LINEAR_API_KEY=lin_api_... /path/to/kata/apps/symphony/target/release/symphony --port 8080

Key features:

• GitHub and Linear integration - polls for issues, manages state transitions, respects priorities and dependency graphs
• Parallel agents - configurable concurrency with per-state slot limits
• Multi-turn sessions - agents continue on the same worker session across turns, preserving conversation history
• Full PR lifecycle - agents create PRs, address review feedback, resolve comment threads, and merge
• Real-time streaming - events flow from workers to the orchestrator as they happen
• Project-local config - symphony init writes .symphony/WORKFLOW.md, starter prompts, and reference docs
• Dynamic config reload - WORKFLOW.md changes take effect without restart
• SSH worker pools - distribute sessions across remote machines
• HTTP dashboard + JSON API - live observability at localhost:8080

Use Kata Symphony when you want:

• autonomous ticket-to-merge execution without human intervention
• parallel agent sessions working through a tracker backlog
• a headless orchestrator you can run on a server or CI

Pi Coding Agent extension

Symphony users on Pi can install @kata-sh/pi-symphony-extension to initialize, start, attach to, and monitor Symphony from Pi. It adds /symphony:* commands and a live console for running workers, retry queue entries, blocked issues, completed issues, and pending escalations.

pi install npm:@kata-sh/pi-symphony-extension
# or, from the monorepo package:
pi install git:github.com/gannonh/kata

Read more in apps/symphony/pi-extension/README.md.

Read more in apps/symphony/README.md.

Kata Context

Kata Context provides structural, semantic, and memory-based codebase understanding for AI coding agents. It indexes source files using tree-sitter, builds a dependency graph stored in SQLite, and exposes commands for graph queries, grep, and file discovery.

npx @kata/context

Path	Purpose
apps/cli	Kata CLI
apps/desktop	Kata Desktop
apps/symphony	Kata Symphony (Rust)
apps/context	Kata Context
apps/cli/skills-src	Source of truth for Kata Agent Skills
apps/online-docs	Documentation site
packages/core	Shared types
packages/shared	Shared agent, auth, config, git, session, and source logic
packages/ui	Shared UI components
packages/mermaid	Mermaid diagram renderer

Local Development

Install dependencies:

pnpm install

Install repo-managed git hooks:

pnpm run githooks:install

Common commands:

Command	Purpose
pnpm run validate	Lint + typecheck + test all packages via Turbo
pnpm run validate:affected	Same, only changed packages
cd apps/desktop && pnpm run desktop:dev	Start Kata Desktop in dev mode
cd apps/symphony && cargo build	Build Kata Symphony

Testing

All testing is orchestrated by Turborepo. Each package owns its test runner.

Command	Runs
pnpm run test	All package tests via Turborepo
pnpm run test:affected	Only changed packages

Package	Test runner	Notes
context	Vitest	Uses better-sqlite3 (native Node addon)
symphony	cargo test	Rust, runs through package.json shim
all others	package-local scripts	JS/TS packages run through Turborepo

A pre-push git hook runs turbo run lint typecheck test --affected before every push.

License

Kata packages use the licenses declared in their package directories.