Dependencies

The complete tool-dependency declaration for AgentOps. This is the canonical detail — the README "Requirements" section and the shared skill fallback table summarize it.

AgentOps is designed to degrade gracefully. Almost everything is optional: skills check for a tool before using it and fall back when it is absent (the contract is in skills/shared/SKILL.md "CLI Availability Pattern"). Only an agent runtime plus git is genuinely required to get value.

Classification

Tool	Class	Purpose	Required?	Fallback if absent
agent runtime (claude / codex / opencode)	REQUIRED	The coding harness AgentOps sits on top of. At least one is needed — AgentOps adds bookkeeping, gates, and a corpus to it.	Required (one of)	None — AgentOps has nothing to drive without a runtime. The installer warns and points at the install links.
git	REQUIRED	Version control; .agents/ state lives next to your code, worktrees isolate parallel work, provenance ties artifacts to commits.	Required	None — the SDLC control plane assumes a git repo.
ao	REQUIRED (recommended)	The AgentOps CLI: repo-native bookkeeping, retrieval (ao inject/ao lookup), health (ao doctor), the operating loop, validation gates.	Strongly recommended	Skills still guide the workflow, but the knowledge flywheel, gates, and loops that need the binary are unavailable. Write learnings to .agents/learnings/ by hand.
br + bv (beads_rust)	TRACKING	Offline, git-JSONL-backed issue tracking (_beads/issues.jsonl) plus graph-aware triage. The mandatory task-tracking surface for non-trivial work.	Required for tracked work in this repo	Use the harness task list / plain markdown only for trivial or untracked work. Install/use br for persistent issue tracking.
bd / Dolt as this repo's tracker	HISTORICAL	AgentOps' OWN tracking moved off bd/Dolt to br; the .beads/ config is retained only for migration records and historical runbooks. (bd/dolt itself is NOT retired — it is the gascity SUBSTRATE store, a first-class different layer.)	Not required for this repo's tracking	Do not use bd for current AgentOps tracking; route through BEADS_DIR="$(ao beads dir)" br .... bd/dolt is legitimate when operating the gascity substrate.
out-of-session substrate (ntm / ao agent / MCP)	ORCHESTRATION	Runs whole operating-loop sessions out of session — an NTM tmux swarm, managed-agents via ao agent, or the MCP tool surface (ao mcp serve). AgentOps owns none of it; it adopts a substrate, the way it adopts br.	Optional (out-of-session only)	Run the loop in-session yourself (/rpi, /evolve). The substrate adds only always-on orchestration.
mcp_agent_mail	ORCHESTRATION	Multi-agent coordination — inboxes and advisory file leases so parallel lanes don't collide on the same files (the agent-mail skill wraps it).	Optional (multi-lane only)	Single-lane work needs no coordination bus.
gh (GitHub CLI)	PR / CI	Open and manage PRs, query CI status, drive the ship/merge flow.	Optional	Open PRs through the web UI; skip automated PR/merge steps.
go	BUILD-FROM-SOURCE	Toolchain to build cli/bin/ao from source (go 1.26, per cli/go.mod).	Optional	Install a prebuilt ao via Homebrew, the install script, or release binaries — no Go needed.
jq	UTILITY	Parse --json output from ao, br, and gh in scripts and dispatch loops.	Optional	Read JSON manually or use non-JSON output modes; some script automations are unavailable.
rg (ripgrep)	UTILITY	Fast code/corpus search used by research and several scripts.	Optional	Falls back to grep/git grep; slower but functional.
curl	UTILITY	Fetch the installer and release assets during install.	Required only for curl-pipe install	Download release binaries manually or install via Homebrew.
openssl	UTILITY	Hashing/randomness in some scripts (e.g. openssl dgst); paired with the sha256 tools.	Optional	sha256sum/shasum cover the hashing path; most flows do not need openssl.
sha256sum / shasum -a 256	UTILITY	Verify download integrity and compute content hashes (codex artifact hashes, install checksums).	Optional	Either tool satisfies the need; scripts detect whichever is present.
tmux	UTILITY	Session multiplexing for streamed/long-running RPI runs and an NTM agent swarm's sessions.	Optional	RPI runs in non-tmux modes; a managed-agents substrate needs no local tmux.
cass	UTILITY	Session-history search (ao search upstream backend).	Optional	Skip transcript search. Note: "install cass for session history."
cm (cass_memory_system)	UTILITY	Procedural memory for agents — durable playbooks and mistake-guards; pairs with cass.	Optional	Lessons stay in .agents/ markdown, carried by hand between sessions.
ubs (ultimate_bug_scanner)	UTILITY	Deterministic static bug scanning that feeds the review/validation gate before you ship.	Optional	Skill-driven review only; no deterministic pre-ship bug scan.
ACFS (agentic_coding_flywheel_setup)	BOOTSTRAP	One-command environment that installs the recommended toolchain above (br/bv, ntm, cass, cm, ubs, agent mail, dcg).	Optional	Install each tool individually.
awk, bash	UTILITY	Shell plumbing the scripts and ao doctor checks rely on.	Effectively always present	POSIX baseline; present on every supported platform.

Notes

• Health check. ao doctor probes the tools it depends on (ao, awk, bash, br, cass, git, tmux) and reports what is missing without failing the workflow.
• Install helpers. scripts/install.sh detects package managers (brew, apt/apt-get, dnf/yum, pacman, zypper) and runtimes (claude, codex, opencode) and adapt; nothing here is hard-required beyond curl for the curl-pipe path.
• Out-of-session vs in-session. The only orchestration dependency is an out-of-session substrate (NTM / managed-agents / MCP), and it is strictly out-of-session and optional. In-session, an agent runtime + git (+ ao/br recommended) is the whole stack. See docs/3.0.md.
• Graceful degradation is a contract, not a courtesy. Every skill that shells out to an optional tool must check availability first and inform the user what was skipped — see the shared fallback table.
• Migrating off a retired surface (bd, hooks, the daemon, the removed rpi/evolve verbs, ao recall)? The living map is MIGRATION.md.