Why Mantis AI?

The repository IS the agent — Every action your agent takes is a git commit. You can see exactly what it did, when, and why. If it screws up, revert it. Want to clone your agent? Fork the repo — code, personality, scheduled jobs, full history, all of it goes with your fork.

Free compute, built in — Every GitHub account comes with free cloud computing time. Mantis AI uses that to run your agent. One task or a hundred in parallel — the compute is already included.

Self-evolving — The agent modifies its own code through pull requests. Every change is auditable, every change is reversible. You stay in control.

How It Works

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                                                      │
│  ┌─────────────────┐         ┌─────────────────┐                     │
│  │  Event Handler  │ ──1──►  │     GitHub      │                     │
│  │  (creates job)  │         │ (job/* branch)  │                     │
│  └────────▲────────┘         └────────┬────────┘                     │
│           │                           │                              │
│           │                           2 (triggers run-job.yml)       │
│           │                           │                              │
│           │                           ▼                              │
│           │                  ┌─────────────────┐                     │
│           │                  │  Docker Agent   │                     │
│           │                  │  (runs Pi, PRs) │                     │
│           │                  └────────┬────────┘                     │
│           │                           │                              │
│           │                           3 (creates PR)                 │
│           │                           │                              │
│           │                           ▼                              │
│           │                  ┌─────────────────┐                     │
│           │                  │     GitHub      │                     │
│           │                  │   (PR opened)   │                     │
│           │                  └────────┬────────┘                     │
│           │                           │                              │
│           │                           4a (auto-merge.yml)            │
│           │                           4b (rebuild-event-handler.yml) │
│           │                           │                              │
│           5 (notify-pr-complete.yml / │                              │
│           │  notify-job-failed.yml)   │                              │
│           └───────────────────────────┘                              │
│                                                                      │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

You interact with your bot via the web chat interface or Telegram (optional). The Event Handler creates a job branch. GitHub Actions spins up a Docker container with the Pi coding agent. The agent does the work, commits the results, and opens a PR. Auto-merge handles the rest. You get a notification when it's done.

Star History

Get Started

Prerequisites

| Requirement | Install | |-------------|---------| | Node.js 18+ | nodejs.org | | npm | Included with Node.js | | Git | git-scm.com | | GitHub CLI | cli.github.com | | Docker + Docker Compose | docker.com | | ngrok* | ngrok.com |

*ngrok is only required for local installs without port forwarding. VPS/cloud deployments don't need it.

Three steps

Step 1 — Scaffold a new project:

mkdir my-agent && cd my-agent
npx mantis-ai@latest init

This creates a Next.js project with configuration files, GitHub Actions workflows, and agent templates. You don't need to create a GitHub repo first — the setup wizard handles that.

Step 2 — Run the setup wizard:

npm run setup

The wizard walks you through everything:

• Checks prerequisites (Node.js, Git, GitHub CLI)
• Creates a GitHub repository and pushes your initial commit
• Creates a GitHub Personal Access Token (scoped to your repo)
• Collects API keys (Anthropic required; OpenAI, Brave optional)
• Sets GitHub repository secrets and variables
• Generates .env
• Builds the project

Step 3 — Start your agent:

docker compose up -d

• Web Chat: Visit your APP_URL to chat with your agent, create jobs, upload files
• Telegram (optional): Run npm run setup-telegram to connect a Telegram bot
• Webhook: Send a POST to /api/create-job with your API key to create jobs programmatically
• Cron: Edit config/CRONS.json to schedule recurring jobs

Local installs: Your server needs to be reachable from the internet for GitHub webhooks and Telegram. On a VPS/cloud server, your APP_URL is just your domain. For local development, use ngrok (ngrok http 80) or port forwarding to expose your machine. If your ngrok URL changes, update APP_URL in .env and the GitHub repository variable, and re-run npm run setup-telegram if Telegram is configured.

Manual Updating

1. Update the package

npm install mantis-ai@latest

2. Scaffold and update templates

npx mantis-ai init

For most people, that's it — init handles everything. It updates your project files, runs npm install, and updates MANTIS_VERSION in your local .env. See Understanding init below for details on what this updates and how to handle custom changes.

3. Rebuild for local dev

npm run build

4. Commit and push

git add -A && git commit -m "upgrade mantis-ai to vX.X.X"
git push

Pushing to main triggers the rebuild-event-handler.yml workflow on your server. It detects the version change, runs mantis-ai init, updates MANTIS_VERSION in the server's .env, pulls the new Docker image, restarts the container, rebuilds .next, and reloads PM2 — no manual docker compose needed.

Upgrade failed? See Recovering from a Failed Upgrade.

Understanding init

How your project is structured

When you ran mantis-ai init the first time, it scaffolded a project folder with two kinds of files:

Your files — These are yours to customize. init will never overwrite them:

| Files | What they do | |-------|-------------| | config/SOUL.md, EVENT_HANDLER.md, AGENT.md, etc. | Your agent's personality, behavior, and prompts | | config/CRONS.json, TRIGGERS.json | Your scheduled jobs and webhook triggers | | app/ | Next.js pages and UI components | | docker/job/ | The Dockerfile for your agent's job container |

Managed files — These are infrastructure files that need to stay in sync with the package version. init auto-updates them for you:

| Files | What they do | |-------|-------------| | .github/workflows/ | GitHub Actions that run jobs, auto-merge PRs, rebuild on deploy | | docker-compose.yml | Defines how your containers run together (Traefik, event handler, runner) | | docker/event-handler/ | The Dockerfile for the event handler container | | .dockerignore | Keeps unnecessary files out of Docker builds |

What happens when you run init

1. Managed files are updated automatically to match the new package version
2. Your files are left alone — but if the package ships new defaults (e.g., a new field in CRONS.json), init lets you know:

Updated templates available:
These files differ from the current package templates.

  config/CRONS.json

To view differences:  npx mantis-ai diff <file>
To reset to default:  npx mantis-ai reset <file>

You can review at your own pace:

npx mantis-ai diff config/CRONS.json    # see what changed
npx mantis-ai reset config/CRONS.json   # accept the new template

If you've modified managed files

If you've made custom changes to managed files (e.g., added extra steps to a GitHub Actions workflow), use --no-managed so init doesn't overwrite your changes:

npx mantis-ai init --no-managed

CLI Commands

All commands are run via npx mantis-ai <command> (or the npm run shortcuts where noted).

Project setup:

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | init | Scaffold a new project, or update templates in an existing one | | setup | Run the full interactive setup wizard (npm run setup) | | setup-telegram | Reconfigure the Telegram webhook (npm run setup-telegram) | | reset-auth | Regenerate AUTH_SECRET, invalidating all sessions |

Templates:

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | diff [file] | List files that differ from package templates, or diff a specific file | | reset [file] | List all template files, or restore a specific one to package default |

Secrets & variables:

These commands set individual GitHub repository secrets/variables using the gh CLI. They read GH_OWNER and GH_REPO from your .env. If VALUE is omitted, you'll be prompted with masked input (keeps secrets out of shell history).

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | set-agent-secret KEY [VALUE] | Set AGENT_<KEY> GitHub secret and update .env | | set-agent-llm-secret KEY [VALUE] | Set AGENT_LLM_<KEY> GitHub secret | | set-var KEY [VALUE] | Set a GitHub repository variable |

GitHub secrets use a prefix convention so the workflow can route them correctly:

• AGENT_ — Protected secrets passed to the Docker container (filtered from LLM). Example: AGENT_GH_TOKEN, AGENT_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
• AGENT_LLM_ — LLM-accessible secrets (not filtered). Example: AGENT_LLM_BRAVE_API_KEY
• No prefix — Workflow-only secrets, never passed to container. Example: GH_WEBHOOK_SECRET

Template File Conventions

The templates/ directory contains files scaffolded into user projects by mantis-ai init. Two naming conventions handle files that npm or AI tools would otherwise misinterpret:

.template suffix — Files ending in .template are scaffolded with the suffix stripped. This is used for files that npm mangles (.gitignore) or that AI tools would pick up as real project docs (CLAUDE.md).

| In templates/ | Scaffolded as | |-----------------|---------------| | .gitignore.template | .gitignore | | CLAUDE.md.template | CLAUDE.md | | api/CLAUDE.md.template | api/CLAUDE.md |

CLAUDE.md exclusion — The scaffolding walker skips any file named CLAUDE.md (without the .template suffix). This is a safety net so a bare CLAUDE.md accidentally added to templates/ never gets copied into user projects where AI tools would confuse it with real project instructions.

Security

Mantis AI includes API key authentication, webhook secret validation (fail-closed), session encryption, secret filtering in the Docker agent, and auto-merge path restrictions. However, all software carries risk — Mantis AI is provided as-is, and you are responsible for securing your own infrastructure. If you're running locally with a tunnel (ngrok, Cloudflare Tunnel, port forwarding), be aware that your dev server endpoints are publicly accessible with no rate limiting and no TLS on the local hop.

See docs/SECURITY.md for full details on what's exposed, the risks, and recommendations.

Docs

| Document | Description | |----------|-------------| | Architecture | Two-layer design, file structure, API endpoints, GitHub Actions, Docker agent | | Configuration | Environment variables, GitHub secrets, repo variables, ngrok, Telegram setup | | Customization | Personality, skills, operating system files, using your bot, security details | | Chat Integrations | Web chat, Telegram, adding new channels | | Auto-Merge | Auto-merge controls, ALLOWED_PATHS configuration | | Deployment | VPS setup, Docker Compose, HTTPS with Let's Encrypt | | How to Use Pi | Guide to the Pi coding agent | | Pre-Release | Installing beta/alpha builds, going back to stable | | Security | Security disclaimer, local development risks | | Upgrading | Automated upgrades, recovering from failed upgrades |

Maintainer

| Document | Description | |----------|-------------| | NPM | Updating pi-skills, versioning, and publishing releases |