README.md

July 26, 2026 · View on GitHub

Watchfire

Better context. Better code.

AI coding agents work best when they have the right context. Watchfire lets you define your project structure, break work into well-scoped tasks, and orchestrate agents that execute with full awareness of your codebase, constraints, and goals. It manages context automatically — so agents stay on track and produce code you'd actually ship.

Install

macOS

Homebrew (recommended):

brew tap watchfire-io/tap
brew install --cask watchfire-io/tap/watchfire   # Desktop app (GUI + CLI)
brew install watchfire-io/tap/watchfire          # CLI & daemon only

Script:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/watchfire-io/watchfire/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Linux

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/watchfire-io/watchfire/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Homebrew also works on Linux:

brew tap watchfire-io/tap && brew install watchfire-io/tap/watchfire

Windows

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/watchfire-io/watchfire/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

How It Works

Key Features

🎯 Context Management

Define your project once. Watchfire feeds agents the right specs, constraints, and codebase context — no copy-pasting prompts.

📋 Structured Workflow

Break big projects into tasks with clear specs. Agents tackle them in order, each in an isolated git worktree branch.

🚀 Scale with Confidence

Run agents across multiple projects in parallel. Monitor live terminal output, review results, and merge — from TUI or GUI.

Context flows into agents

Agent Modes

Mode	Description
Chat	Interactive session with the coding agent
Task	Execute a specific task from the task list
Start All	Run all ready tasks sequentially
Wildfire	Autonomous loop: execute tasks, refine drafts, generate new tasks
Generate Definition	Auto-generate a project definition from your codebase
Generate Tasks	Auto-generate tasks from the project definition

MCP Server

Watchfire is also an MCP server: any MCP-capable coding agent can use it as a factory for other agents. The outer agent plans and reviews; Watchfire manufactures the code in sandboxed, git-worktree-isolated runs and merges the results.

The server is local-only by construction — its only transport is stdio, spawned by the MCP client on this machine. It never opens a listening socket and is not reachable from outside the host.

Quickstart

watchfire mcp install claude-code   # Claude Code
watchfire mcp install codex         # OpenAI Codex  (~/.codex/config.toml)
watchfire mcp install gemini        # Gemini CLI    (~/.gemini/settings.json)
watchfire mcp install opencode      # opencode      (~/.config/opencode/opencode.json)
watchfire mcp install copilot       # Copilot CLI   (~/.copilot/mcp-config.json)

watchfire mcp install               # interactive picker (the five above + Custom)

Installers merge into existing config files (never overwrite) and are idempotent — re-running updates or no-ops. If a client isn't installed or its config can't be parsed, the manual snippet is printed instead.

For any other MCP client, print the generic snippet:

watchfire mcp install --print

{
  "command": "watchfire",
  "args": ["mcp", "serve"]
}

The factory loop

The server exposes Watchfire's project, task, run, and inspect surfaces as 18 MCP tools. The canonical loop for an outer agent:

create_task — file a task with a prompt + acceptance criteria
run_task — launch a sandboxed agent on it in an isolated worktree
wait_for_task — block until the run completes (on timed_out: true, call it again)
get_task — check success / failure_reason — done means the agent stopped, not that it succeeded
get_task_diff — review exactly what changed, then iterate with follow-up tasks

Creating a task never starts it: status ready queues a task for run_all (and lets an in-flight run_all/wildfire chain pick it up), while run_task is what starts one now. Watchfire runs at most one agent per project — the run tools refuse rather than queue while one is busy, so use wait_for_task or stop_agent first.

The rest of the catalog: list_projects, get_project, list_tasks, update_task, delete_task, run_all, start_wildfire, stop_agent, get_agent_status, get_agent_screen, get_insights, list_logs, get_log.

Read-only mode

watchfire mcp serve --read-only serves only the 10 observation tools (projects, tasks, diffs, screens, insights, logs, agent status) — no task creation, editing, or agent control. The write and run tools aren't merely refused: they are never registered, so they don't appear in tools/list at all. Useful for dashboards or less-trusted callers.

A note on recursion

A Watchfire-managed agent could itself call the Watchfire MCP server — tasks spawning tasks. This works, but it is not the designed pattern (outer agent → Watchfire is), and an agent that files new tasks on every run can create an unbounded task-spawning loop. Prefer having the outer agent own the loop and review each run's diff before queueing more work.

Build from Source

# Build & install
make install-tools   # Dev tools (golangci-lint, air, protoc plugins)
make build           # Build daemon + CLI
make install         # Install to /usr/local/bin

# Use it
cd your-project
watchfire init       # Initialize a project
watchfire task add   # Add tasks
watchfire            # Launch the TUI

Components

Component	Binary	Description
Daemon	`watchfired`	Orchestration, PTY management, git workflows, gRPC server, system tray
CLI/TUI	`watchfire`	Project-scoped CLI commands + interactive TUI mode
GUI	`Watchfire.app`	Electron multi-project client

Development

make dev-daemon   # Daemon with hot reload
make dev-tui      # Build and run TUI
make dev-gui      # Electron GUI dev mode
make test         # Tests with race detector
make test-mcp-e2e # MCP end-to-end test (real binary + real daemon, isolated HOME)
make lint         # Linting
make proto        # Regenerate protobuf code