Ark

An agent harness and development workflow for orchestrating AI-driven programming tasks.

Use the simple CLI ark to define your AI workflow and manage coding agents in your project.

See the deck for design details.

Status: Ark is experimental and some features are unstable. See the Future Plan.

Why Ark ?

Ark defines the next generation of AI-native software engineering work: structured workflows, agent collaboration, and tool orchestration.

Ark provides:

• A simple CLI for managing AI-native software projects.
• A workflow harness for coordinating Claude Code, Codex, and other coding agents.
• Sandbox for isolated execution environment.
• Session-level journals for tracking agent activity and workspace state.
• Task-level development records with integrated worktree management.
• Specification management for projects and features.

Installation

Prebuilt binaries are available for macOS, Linux, and Windows on every tagged release.

npm

npm install -g @anekoique/ark

Cargo

cargo install --git https://github.com/Anekoique/ark ark-cli --locked

Confirm the installation:

ark --version

Quick Start

From the root of a project where you want to use Ark:

ark init

On first run, Ark scaffolds:

.ark/
├── workflow.md           # the rules of the game
├── config.toml           # worktree, workspace, upgrade, sandbox settings
├── templates/            # PRD, PLAN, REVIEW, VERIFY, SPEC
├── tasks/                # active + archived tasks
└── specs/
    ├── project/          # user-authored project conventions
    └── features/         # feature specs promoted from deep-tier tasks

.claude/commands/ark/     # slash commands (Claude Code; Codex/OpenCode equivalents)
├── quick.md              # /ark:quick
├── design.md             # /ark:design [--deep]
├── research.md           # /ark:research
└── …                     # commit, resume, discard, record, spec-extract, spec-audit

CLAUDE.md                 # managed block pointing the agent at .ark/

Open your agent in the project and start a task:

/ark:quick    fix typo in readme
/ark:design   add rate-limit middleware
/ark:design --deep  refactor auth layer
/ark:research compare WAL strategies

See .ark/workflow.md for the full workflow.

Tiers

Pick the tier that fits the different tasks.

Tier	For
Quick	Reversible in one commit, no new abstractions
Standard	Feature work with testable scope
Deep	Architectural or new subsystem
Research	Knowledge-gathering; corpus is the deliverable

Lifecycle

ark provides the following commands for managing its presence in a project:

Command	What it does
ark init	Driven project with ark
ark load	Restore from .ark.db if present.
ark unload	Snapshot .ark/, managed blocks, and the Ark hook into .ark.db.
ark remove	Wipe Ark fully.
ark upgrade	Refresh embedded templates to the current CLI version.
ark context	Get current project context which driven ark
ark archive	Stabilize some features.
ark cleanup	List or remove worktrees of closed tasks.
ark sandbox	Run agent inside a isolated enviroment.

User-authored files inside owned dirs survive an unload → load round-trip losslessly.

Sandbox

ark sandbox provide isolated execution environment.

ark sandbox create   # start the box
ark sandbox enter    # launch the agent CLI inside (--shell for bash)
ark sandbox rm       # tear it down

Configure the image, env passthrough, and host-config sharing under [sandbox] in .ark/config.toml. Requires docker on PATH.

Inspiration

Ark is highly inspired by and learns from:

• trellis

• superpowers

• openspec / spec-kit

• humanize

LICENCE

MIT