A link to bench.12vectors.com under the opening paragraph, and the board screenshot beneath it — the fastest way to say what this is. The image is an absolute raw.githubusercontent URL rather than a repo path, for two reasons. README.md ships in the release artifact and site/ deliberately does not, so a relative link would break in every vendored install. And the site's own copy is served under an immutable year-long cache, so linking that would pin readers to whatever screenshot was current when they first loaded the page. The three-layer-law paragraph gains a clause and loses one. That section is sliced into /concepts/three-layer-law/, so "or read them at bench.12vectors.com" rendered as a page on that site telling you to go to that site. It now says AGENTS.md is the file the docs site is cut from, which is true in both places — the rule this repo sets for its own prose.
100 lines
4.4 KiB
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100 lines
4.4 KiB
Markdown
# Bench
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A live kanban for coding-agent work: task files in stage directories are
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the only source of truth; a stdlib-only board narrates everything that
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happens to them — agents working in git worktrees, PRs opening on review,
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CI and Copilot state on the cards, drives of the app from a task's own
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branch, and an archive that is never a delete. Turn on team mode
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(`BOARD_SYNC=1`) and the truth is `origin/main`: moves commit and push
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themselves, every board pulls on a beat, and the person who claimed a
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card first keeps it.
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**Docs: [bench.12vectors.com](https://bench.12vectors.com)** — guides,
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concepts, and a settings reference, every page of it generated from this
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repository's own markdown, so what the docs say and what bench does
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cannot drift apart.
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*bench's own board, running on this repository. Three agents at work,
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each on its own branch — and every one of them stops at review.*
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## Install into a repo
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```bash
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mkdir .task-manager && curl -L \
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https://github.com/12vectors/bench/releases/latest/download/bench.tar.gz \
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| tar -xz -C .task-manager
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./.task-manager/start.sh # wires the project (idempotent) and serves
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```
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No token, no clone: releases are curated artifacts that never contained
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bench's own cards or settings, so the board starts empty by construction.
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The first run asks the two questions it cannot answer for you — solo or
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team, and which agent adapter — and writes `manager/local/.env` from the
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documented example, so every other setting is discoverable in your own
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copy. What runs your tests is read off the project rather than asked
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(`package.json` → `npm test`, and so on); nothing recognisable leaves
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`BOARD_AGENT_COMMANDS` empty, and that is the key to set before an agent
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can run them. Bare Enter takes the default
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throughout; with no terminal (CI, a script) it asks nothing and
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`install.py --setup` asks later.
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Commit `.task-manager/` into the host repo — core is vendored on purpose,
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so clones work offline and updates show up in the host's own diffs.
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The workflow brief ships as `.task-manager/AGENTS.md` — the cross-vendor
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name coding agents read natively — with `CLAUDE.md` beside it as a one-line
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compatibility pointer. Both live inside `.task-manager/`, so a host repo's
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own root `AGENTS.md` is never touched.
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## Update
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```bash
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./.task-manager/update.sh # latest release
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BENCH_REF=v2 ./.task-manager/update.sh # an exact release tag
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```
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The artifact is stamped with the repo it was built from, so updating
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needs no configuration; `BENCH_SOURCE=<owner/repo>` in
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`manager/local/.env` overrides the stamp. Updates replace
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`manager/core/` and the top-level scripts wholesale and touch nothing
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else — tasks, plans, reference, and everything under `manager/local/`
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(your driver, commands, prompt overrides, settings, state) survive every
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update. Then `python3 .task-manager/install.py` and restart the board.
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If the source repo has no published release yet, `update.sh` says so and
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changes nothing.
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## Working on bench itself
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```bash
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git clone git@github.com:12vectors/bench.git && cd bench && ./start.sh
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```
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A clone carries bench's own cards and local/ content — that is dev mode,
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not an install. (Installing from a clone anyway works: `install.py`
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clears the shipped cards on its first boot in a host repo.) Releases are
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built by `./release.sh` from the manifest at
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`manager/core/release-manifest`: tag = `v<VERSION>`, one stable asset
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name (`bench.tar.gz`), contents at the tarball root — the two things the
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install one-liner above depends on.
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## The three-layer law
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Core knows about tasks, worktrees, PRs and events. It knows nothing about
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any particular app (drivers do: `manager/local/driver/start`), agent
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vendor (adapters do: `manager/core/adapters/`), or project
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(`manager/local/` does).
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The consequence is what makes an update safe: `update.sh` replaces
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`manager/core/` wholesale, and everything a project taught bench about
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itself lives outside it. Full docs in [AGENTS.md](AGENTS.md) — the file
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the docs site is cut from, and the one an agent working in your repo
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reads; the adapter contract in
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[manager/core/adapters/README.md](manager/core/adapters/README.md).
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## License
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[MIT](LICENSE).
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