Dotagents

dotagents

dotagents is a public Go CLI. The user's canonical configuration is a separate private directory or repository.

Config precedence:

1. --config /path/to/dotagents.yaml
2. $DOTAGENTS_HOME/dotagents.yaml
3. ~/.agents/dotagents.yaml

Never infer configuration from the current project. Never replace a user's config root with a public checkout.

Commands

dotagents setup [--memory off|basic|memsearch] [--agents ...] [--yes] [--dry-run] [--json]
dotagents status [--verbose] [--agents ...]
dotagents sync [--pull] [--agents ...]
dotagents doctor [--e2e] [--agents ...]
dotagents view [--no-open] [--ssh-host user@host] [--port N] [--host ADDR]
dotagents skill new <name> [--description ...]
dotagents skill list [--agents ...]
dotagents skill info <name>
dotagents skill update [name ...]
dotagents skill promote <name-or-path> [--dry-run]
dotagents mcp <list|add|import|remove> [options]

Run dotagents help --all for maintenance commands and compatibility aliases. Do not use hidden aliases in new scripts or documentation.

setup

First-run setup:

1. Creates the canonical config root when absent.
2. Extracts missing public starter assets without overwriting user files.
3. Detects supported harness binaries.
4. Scans native skill, role, and MCP locations.
5. Shows an interactive review screen: share, keep harness-specific, or skip per item; items identical across harnesses are shared automatically. Imports are copy or conversion only; originals remain untouched.
6. In non-interactive runs it falls back to sequential prompts; --yes imports everything without prompting, --dry-run prints candidates and exits without changes, --json emits the detection result and exits.
7. Registers the chosen memory tier.
8. Patches only the required native harness settings.
9. Runs the first sync.

The public starter contains dotagents, the pinned grilling example, six generic roles (architect builder general researcher reviewer tester), and reusable memory scripts. Personal skills, hooks, MCP servers, secrets, and memory data belong only in the private config repository.

Memory tiers:

• off: no managed memory hooks.
• basic (default): Python-3-only bounded Markdown digests under $KNOWLEDGE_DIR/sessions/ plus recent context at session start.
• memsearch: the indexed SessionStart, Stop, and SessionEnd pipeline; requires memsearch on PATH.

For Hermes, the memsearch tier also keeps the built-in memory files and the knowledge vault in sync: sync-vault-to-memory.sh runs at session start, session-end.sh captures the session digest at finalize, and sync-memory-to-vault.sh exports durable memory at finalize. The generic session-start.sh is not registered for Hermes because its Claude-style context response is not consumed by Hermes; Hermes injects the synchronized built-in memory natively instead.

Verify the complete setup with dotagents doctor --e2e, then run hermes hooks doctor. Hermes hook approval is host-local and may require one interactive approval after setup.

status

Reports each configured harness as detected or not detected and compares the four managed surfaces with native state:

• skills
• MCP servers
• hooks
• agent roles

Missing, drifted, conflicting, stale managed, and unrelated external entries are reported separately.

sync

Reconciles only configured managed entries. Unrelated native content remains untouched.

For symlink-based harnesses, skills point to canonical directories under ~/.agents/skills. Hermes uses skills.external_dirs: ["~/.agents/skills"]; Qwen Code uses skills.directories: ["~/.agents/skills"]. Both consume the canonical tree without creating a duplicate mirror.

Agent roles are canonical Markdown files under ~/.agents/agents/ and render to:

• Claude Code: ~/.claude/agents/<name>.md
• Codex: ~/.codex/agents/<name>.toml
• Factory Droid: ~/.factory/droids/<name>.md
• OpenCode: ~/.config/opencode/agents/<name>.md
• OMP: ~/.omp/agent/agents/<name>.md
• Qwen Code: ~/.qwen/agents/<name>.md

Pi has a managed skill root only. OMP is a separate target with skills, roles, and MCP support.

For MCP servers, sync patches only named canonical entries and preserves unrelated native servers. Import redacts literal environment values to ${KEY} references; list output never prints values.

For hooks, sync registers only declared entries on harnesses with verified hook support. Host-local review and approval state remains outside dotagents; Hermes keys first-use consent by the exact event and command and reports script mtime drift through hermes hooks doctor.

sync --pull runs git pull --ff-only in the private canonical repository before reconciliation.

External skills

Declare external Git sources in the private dotagents.yaml:

external_skills:
  - url: https://github.com/example/shared-skills
    branch: main
    skill_dirs: [engineering/alpha, productivity/beta]
    materialize: true

dotagents.lock records exact commits and materialized ownership. sync repairs drift to the pin; skill update explicitly advances it. doctor audits external source content and fails on materialization drift.

MCP management

dotagents mcp list
dotagents mcp add local --command uvx --arg pkg@1.2.3 --env KEY=value
dotagents mcp import claude-code local --agents=codex,hermes,droid,omp
dotagents sync
dotagents mcp remove local

Use versions verified against the package registry. Keep secrets in environment variables or host-local native config, never canonical YAML.

doctor --e2e

Runs sync, status, and doctor as one health check. It fails on drift, conflicts, invalid external pins, unsupported managed claims, or other doctor errors.

dotagents doctor --e2e

view

Launches HarnessKit (hk serve) as an inspection web UI over every detected harness — skills, MCP, hooks, and configs in one place, with a security audit. The view command writes nothing, but HarnessKit's own enable/disable/deploy actions bypass dotagents; treat view as inspect/audit and reconcile any HarnessKit changes with dotagents sync. Requires hk on PATH (install HarnessKit separately).

It prints the tokenized URL on its own line and, when running locally, opens it in your default browser. --no-open suppresses the browser launch. On a remote host, pass --ssh-host user@host (or run inside an SSH session, where it derives the host from SSH_CONNECTION) to print a ready ssh -L tunnel command instead of auto-opening. Any other flags (--port, --host, --no-token, --name) are forwarded to hk serve.

dotagents view                                 # open the inspector locally
dotagents view --no-open --port 7070           # print the URL, do not open a browser
dotagents view --ssh-host me@box --host 0.0.0.0 # remote: print an ssh -L tunnel command

Capability matrix

Do not add a surface without a verified native adapter and focused tests.