Prior CLI

The Judgment Layer for Human-AI Work — capture and track engineering decisions made during AI-assisted development.

Installation

npm install -g getprior

Quick Start

# Initialize Prior in your project
prior init

# Check status
prior status

# Capture a decision interactively
prior capture

# Capture from text
prior capture "We decided to use PostgreSQL over MongoDB for ACID compliance"

# Detect decisions from stdin (outputs JSON)
echo "conversation transcript..." | prior detect

Commands

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | prior init | Initialize Prior in the current directory | | prior setup | Configure API keys (Claude, Slack, GitHub) | | prior status | Show Prior status for this project | | prior capture [text] | Capture a decision (interactive or from argument) | | prior detect [text] | Detect decisions in text (outputs JSON) |

What It Does

Prior captures the why behind your technical decisions:

1. Initialize — Run prior init in any git repo to create prior.config.json
2. Capture — Record decisions with rationale, tradeoffs, and impact levels
3. Detect — AI-powered detection of decisions from conversation transcripts
4. Distribute — Publish decisions to Slack and GitHub (requires Prior API)

Configuration

Running prior init creates a prior.config.json:

{
  "version": 1,
  "project": {
    "name": "my-project",
    "repo": "owner/my-project"
  },
  "integrations": {
    "slack": { "channel": "decisions" },
    "github": { "enabled": true }
  },
  "api": {
    "url": "http://localhost:3000"
  }
}

Requirements

• Node.js >= 18.0.0
• Git (recommended)
• Prior API running locally for full functionality

Learn More

• GitHub Repository
• Documentation

License

MIT