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Open sourceBabysitter

Babysitter. Your workflow, actually enforced.

Define your workflow in code. Every step is enforced, quality gates pass before progression, humans approve at breakpoints, every decision is journaled.

MITv6.0.0Node 20+
InstallRead on GitHubOn npm

01Install

One install, then your harness.

The harness (agent, skills, tools, process, memory) is built around a coding agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and 9 others. Every harness shares the same first step.

every harness
npm install -g @a5c-ai/babysitter
claude code
claude plugin marketplace add a5c-ai/babysitter-claude
claude plugin install --scope user babysitter@a5c.ai
codex
codex plugin marketplace add a5c-ai/babysitter-codex
codex plugin add babysitter --marketplace babysitter
More harnesses

The other ten harnesses install through the universal helper. The argument is the harness key, which is not always the harness name.

universal helper
babysitter harness:install-plugin <harness-key> [--workspace <path>]
  • Cursor adds the marketplace through its UI; there is no CLI marketplace add.
  • Antigravity and Gemini install via the SDK helper only; there is no standalone npm installer.
  • genty installs from npm only.

Requires Node.js 20+; 22.x LTS recommended. The README labels the Codex integration “(Beta)”. Commands verified July 2026 against the harness install matrix.

One install, and your next run keeps a journal you can replay.

02Mechanism

How it works.

Two loops. The deterministic loop holds state, budgets, gates, and the journal; the adaptive loop reasons inside it. Your agents do exactly what the process permits, nothing more. The README puts it bluntly: enforce obedience on agentic workforces.

  • Process as code

    The workflow is JavaScript. The orchestrator can only do what this code permits: ctx.task, ctx.breakpoint, gate logic written as real code.

  • Mandatory stop

    The harness cannot keep running on its own. Every step ends with a forced stop; the process decides what comes next.

  • Enforcement

    Gates block progression until they are satisfied. A step that fails its gate does not proceed.

  • Event-sourced journal

    All run state lives in ~/.a5c/runs/ as an append-only record, with deterministic replay and resume from any point.

ADAPTIVEGATESSTATEBUDGETSJOURNALDETERMINISTIC
The frame holds while the adaptive loop iterates inside it.

03In code

The shape of a process.

A process is JavaScript. Tasks run through ctx.task, humans approve at ctx.breakpoint, and a gate is an ordinary conditional the run cannot argue with.

process.js (illustrative)
// Illustrative process definition. Gate logic is plain code.
export default defineTask("draft-and-review", async (ctx) => {
  let draft = await ctx.task("write-draft");

  // Quality gate: the run cannot progress until the gate passes.
  let review = await ctx.task("review-draft", { draft });
  while (!review.pass) {
    draft = await ctx.task("revise-draft", { draft, feedback: review.feedback });
    review = await ctx.task("review-draft", { draft });
  }

  // Breakpoint: the run stops here until a human approves.
  await ctx.breakpoint("editor-approval", { draft, review });
  return draft;
});

An illustration, condensed. The full API and real process definitions are in the repository.

04The contract

What you get.

01Process enforcement
Steps run in the order the code allows, and no other order.
02Deterministic replay
Every run reconstructs from its journal and replays to the same decisions.
03Breakpoints
The run stops and waits for a human before consequential steps.
04Parallel execution
Tasks fan out under the same process; the journal keeps one record.
05Quality convergence
Multi-dimensional quality scores, iterated until the target is met (the docs' 90-Score Pattern: a scoring method, not a benchmark result).

05Portability

Harness-agnostic as of v6.

The same process runs across the 12 supported harnesses, on the Adapters runtime. Write it once; the journal, gates, and breakpoints follow it to every harness.

See the runtime

06Modes

Five ways to run.

01call
Interactive. Breakpoints stop the run for approval.
02yolo
Autonomous. The same process, no breakpoints.
03plan
Plan the run without executing it.
04forever
Continuous runs that pick up new work.
05doctor
Diagnostics for a run and its journal.

07Headless

The internal harness.

A built-in harness runs processes programmatically, with no external coding agent: the entry point for CI and headless operation. At runtime it can delegate tasks to any discovered installed harness, so a single headless entry point can drive a multi-agent workflow.

Babysitter is the enforcement engine of the a5c stack, one of its two pillars. Deterministic memory is the other: KIP, pre-release.

Read on GitHubSee the memory layerSee a gate at work in the security lab

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