Daedalus

Daedalus is an AI-native development framework: a CLI, repo conventions, and Jaegers (specialist AI agents—Talos, Ares, and roles under .daedalus/agents/) that work with the operator through a Sortie workflow—initiating drift sequence (/drift) → build → /close → /ship—with Kaiju tracked in kaiju.json. See Glossary for Drift terminology.

Install

npm install -g @nguylabs/daedalus
daedalus                  # cinematic welcome + environment readout

Or one-shot in any repo:

npx @nguylabs/daedalus init

After install

Run daedalus — it detects your environment and tells you the right next move.

| You are… | Run | |---|---| | New to Daedalus on this machine | daedalus user init | | Setting up a repo | daedalus init | | Just looking around | daedalus welcome | | Need a Sortie tip | daedalus beacon |

The bare daedalus command is always safe — it never writes to disk.

First run: meet the system

When you run daedalus with no arguments (or daedalus welcome), Daedalus plays a narrative introduction: what the Automata is, what Jaegers are, how the Drift works, and which command to run next for your situation. The welcome command is always safe — it never writes to disk.

The cinematic also wraps daedalus user init and daedalus init, and those flows detect your environment (OS, shell, git remote, language, package manager, CI, hosting, editor) so you only answer what couldn't be inferred.

Any onboarding command takes --no-cinematic for CI / piped use, and the cinematic auto-disables when NO_COLOR is set or stdout isn't a TTY.

Automata beacons (Sortie tips)

From time to time, Daedalus surfaces Automata beacons—short, jargon-friendly tips that improve how you run a Sortie (release train, neural bridge, audits, etc.):

daedalus beacon              # today’s tip (stable rotation)
daedalus beacon --tag ship # filter by workflow
daedalus beacon --random
daedalus beacon --list       # ids + tags

After a cinematic daedalus welcome, a compact beacon may print below the narrative. Disable with daedalus welcome --no-beacon or DAEDALUS_NO_BEACON=1. Tips ship in reference/automata-beacons.yaml (extend upstream or fork for your team).

Two levels: user & project

Daedalus is designed to be your personal development OS across every project on your machine, while still letting each project override what it needs.

| Tier | Location | Who owns it | What lives here | |---|---|---|---| | Framework | bundled with the package | Daedalus | Defaults, reference Jaegers and skills | | User | ~/.daedalus/ (opt-in) | you | Your global team/stack/verification defaults, personal Jaegers and skills | | Project | <repo>/.daedalus/ | the repo | Project-specific config, active Jaegers, review rules | | Local | <repo>/.daedalus.local/ (gitignored) | you, this machine | Per-machine secrets and overrides |

Precedence (later wins): framework → user → project → local.

Set up your user home (optional)

daedalus user init      # scaffold ~/.daedalus/ with a starter config
daedalus user edit      # edit your global defaults in $EDITOR
daedalus user doctor    # sanity-check the user home
daedalus user sync      # promote tuned project settings into ~/.daedalus/

After daedalus user init, running daedalus init in any new project will pre-fill prompts with your user-level defaults (team, preferred stack, verification commands).

Inspect the effective config

daedalus config show --sources     # effective config, annotated per leaf
daedalus config where stack.language   # which tier supplied this key?
daedalus jaeger list               # all Jaegers with their source tier

Full design in RFC 0001 — User-home layering.

Documentation

Framework

• What is Daedalus?
• Roles
• Events (skills)
• Artifacts
• Values
• Metrics
• Glossary
• Memory conventions
• Adoption playbook

Guides

• Parity checks
• Cross-service coordination
• Cross-repo bridge (docs/bridge.md)
• Updating Daedalus
• CI integration
• Maximizing QA
• Environment health

Concepts

• Kybernetes — system architect / orchestrator / helmsman (see DAEDALUS.md after init)
• Talos — guardian Jaegers (review, security, QA, infra, DBA, API)
• Ares — adversary Jaeger (offensive security)
• Sortie — one full work cycle from initiating drift sequence through ship

License

MIT — see LICENSE.