backant-kairos

Autonomous AI engineer that observes your repository, judges what to work on next, builds the change, and ships it - on a continuous loop.

backant.io · Issues

Install

npx backant-kairos

First run walks you through auth, project analysis, and daemon start. After that, attach to any repo with:

cd /path/to/your/repo
backant

Commands

| Command | What it does | |---|---| | backant | First-time setup or resume in the current workspace | | backant login / logout | Authenticate with backant.io | | backant setup | Re-analyze the project and refresh installed skills | | backant start | Start the Kairos daemon in the current workspace | | backant stop | Stop the daemon | | backant watch | Live event feed with status bar | | backant status | Show current state and stats | | backant memory <sub> | Memory store management (see memory --help) | | backant dream <sub> | Dream-cycle introspection (see dream --help) | | backant eval <sub> | Weekly compliance/cost/outcome report (see eval --help) |

Use --help on any subcommand for details and flags.

How it works (in brief)

Kairos runs a continuous observe → judge → act loop against your repo. Each cycle reads recent activity (open PRs, CI signals, issues, commits, agent traces), decides the highest-leverage next action, and either ships the change directly or hands it back to you with reasoning.

Two features distinguish it from a stateless agent:

• Persistent memory. Kairos maintains a structured memory of decisions, conventions, prior failures, and validated assumptions across sessions. Recall is hybrid (keyword + semantic); embeddings are generated locally with a Qwen3-Embedding model served by Ollama (in Docker), so no codebase content leaves your machine. As of v1.3 the store is a per-repository libSQL database (keyed by your owner/repo), so the same project memory follows you across branches, git worktrees, and machines rather than being tied to one filesystem path.
• Dream cycles. When sleep pressure builds (many cycles without consolidation, accumulating unresolved retries, growing logs), Kairos runs an offline consolidation pass that links related observations, distills durable lessons, and stages candidates for your review.

Memory state lives under ~/.claude/kairos/. Per-project configuration lives in .backant.toml at the repo root. Full configuration reference at backant.io/docs.

Upgrading from an older version? See the migration guide for moving legacy markdown/JSONL and pre-v1.3 SQLite memory into the new per-repo libSQL store.

Requirements

• macOS or Linux
• Claude Code installed and signed in
• GitHub CLI (gh) installed and authenticated
• Docker (for the local embedding model; backant memory init will set it up)
• Active Kairos subscription at backant.io

License

Elastic License 2.0 (ELv2)