Panopticon CLI

Multi-agent orchestration for AI coding assistants

"The Panopticon had six sides, one for each of the Founders of Gallifrey..."

— Classic Doctor Who. The Panopticon was the great hall at the heart of the Time Lord Citadel, where all could be observed. We liked the metaphor.

Spawn AI agents from a dashboard. Route tasks to the right model. Review, test, and merge automatically.

Why Panopticon?

• Stop babysitting agents. Spawn them from a dashboard, monitor progress in real time, and let specialists handle code review, testing, and merging.
• Use the right model for the job. Opus for planning, Kimi for implementation, Haiku for quick commands — automatic routing based on task type and required capabilities.
• Work survives across sessions. PRDs, state files, beads, and skills persist context so agents don't start from zero every time.
• One skill format, every tool. Write a SKILL.md once and it works across Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Gemini CLI.

How It Works

 Issue         PRD           Agent         Review        Test          Merge
┌──────┐    ┌──────┐    ┌──────────┐    ┌──────┐    ┌──────┐    ┌──────────┐
│ Task │ ─► │ Plan │ ─► │ Write    │ ─► │ Code │ ─► │ Run  │ ─► │ PR       │
│ from │    │ with │    │ code in  │    │ rev. │    │ test │    │ merged   │
│ any  │    │ Opus │    │ isolated │    │ by   │    │ by   │    │ by       │
│track-│    │      │    │ worktree │    │ spec-│    │ spec-│    │ spec-    │
│ er   │    │      │    │          │    │ialist│    │ialist│    │ ialist   │
└──────┘    └──────┘    └──────────┘    └──────┘    └──────┘    └──────────┘
 GitHub       Opus        Kimi/Sonnet    Opus        Sonnet       Sonnet
 Linear                   (routed)
 GitLab
 Jira
 Rally

Create a workspace, and Panopticon handles the rest: planning with Opus, implementation with your configured model, automated code review, test execution, and merge — the only manual step is clicking MERGE when you're satisfied.

Key Features

| Feature | Description | |:--------|:------------| | Multi-Agent Orchestration | Spawn and manage AI agents in tmux sessions via dashboard or CLI | | Cloister Lifecycle Manager | Automatic model routing, stuck detection, cost tracking, and specialist handoffs | | Mission Control | 11-view dashboard — project tree, activity feed, kanban board, agent status, costs, metrics, and more | | PRD-Driven Workflow | Opus writes a PRD before implementation starts; agents are blocked without one | | 67+ Universal Skills | Pre-built skills ship out of the box, synced via pan sync — one SKILL.md works across all AI tools | | Multi-Tracker Support | GitHub Issues, Linear, GitLab, Jira, Rally — all from one dashboard | | Multi-Model Routing | Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Kimi, Zhipu — route by task type, capability, and budget | | Workspaces | Git worktree-based feature branches with Docker isolation (local and remote via exe.dev) | | Convoys | Run parallel agents on related issues with automatic synthesis | | Specialists | Dedicated review, test, and merge agents — fully automated quality pipeline | | Beads | Git-backed task tracking that survives context compaction and works offline | | Cost Tracking | Per-issue, per-stage token costs with dashboard analytics | | Legacy Codebase Support | AI self-monitoring skills that learn your codebase conventions over time (details) |

Screenshots

Supported Tools

| Tool | Support | |:-----|:--------| | Claude Code | Full support — agent runtime, hooks, skills | | Codex | Skills sync | | Cursor | Skills sync | | Gemini CLI | Skills sync | | Google Antigravity | Skills sync |

Quick Start

npm install -g panopticon-cli && pan install && pan sync && pan up

That's it! Dashboard runs at https://pan.localhost (or http://localhost:3010 if you skip HTTPS setup).

Requirements

Required

• Node.js 18+
• Git (for worktree-based workspaces)
• Docker (for Traefik and workspace containers)
• tmux (for agent sessions)
• GitHub CLI (gh) or GitLab CLI (glab) for Git operations
• ttyd - Auto-installed by pan install

Optional

• mkcert - For HTTPS certificates (recommended)
• Linear API key - For Linear issue tracking
• Beads CLI - Auto-installed by pan install

Configuration

# Create config file
~/.panopticon.env

# Add API keys
LINEAR_API_KEY=lin_api_xxxxx
GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_xxxxx  # Optional

Register your projects:

pan project add /path/to/your/project --name myproject

Key Concepts

Mission Control — The default view. Project tree on the left, agent activity on the right. Click a feature to see its full pipeline: planning, work, review, test results. Badge bar gives quick access to PRDs, state files, discussions, and transcripts.

Cloister — The lifecycle manager. Routes tasks to models based on capabilities, detects stuck agents, triggers specialist handoffs, and tracks costs.

Workspaces — Git worktree-based feature branches with optional Docker isolation. Each issue gets its own isolated environment. Supports both local and remote (exe.dev) execution.

Specialists — Dedicated agents for code review, testing, and merging. Triggered automatically by Cloister when an agent signals completion. The pipeline is fully automated — code review to merge with zero human intervention (except the final merge click).

Convoys — Run parallel agents on related issues. Useful for security audits, performance reviews, or breaking an epic into concurrent work streams. Results are auto-synthesized.

Skills — Universal SKILL.md format works across Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Gemini. 67+ skills ship out of the box covering development workflows, code review, incident response, and more.

Shadow Engineering — Monitor existing workflows before transitioning to AI-driven development. Upload transcripts, sync discussions, generate inference documents.

Common Commands

# Start dashboard
pan up

# Create workspace and spawn agent
pan workspace create PAN-123

# Check agent status
pan status

# View agent logs
pan logs agent-pan-123

# Stop dashboard
pan down

Maturity

Panopticon is actively used in production to develop itself and multiple other projects.

• 62 PRDs written (16 active, 46 completed)
• 67+ skills shipped and synced across tools
• 5 tracker integrations (GitHub, Linear, GitLab, Jira, Rally)
• 6 AI providers with capability-based model routing
• v0.4.33 — hundreds of issues completed through the full pipeline

Documentation

| Document | Description | |----------|-------------| | docs/INDEX.md | Master documentation index (start here) | | docs/USAGE.md | Detailed usage guide, examples, troubleshooting | | docs/CONFIGURATION.md | Model routing, API setup, presets | | AGENTS.md | Agent architecture | | docs/SPECIALIST_WORKFLOW.md | Review, test, merge pipeline | | docs/LEGACY-CODEBASE.md | AI adaptive learning for legacy codebases | | CONTRIBUTING.md | Contribution guidelines | | CLAUDE.md | Agent development guidance |

Contributing

Contributions welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.