Paraphe

The owner-decision inbox for agents. An agent raises one decision, you answer it on your phone or on the machine running it, and that same agent picks the answer up and carries on.

It is for people who run agents that should ask before they act. Paraphe is the small, self-hosted thing that holds the question until the human answers it — not a task tracker, not a chat client, and not a workflow engine.

Install and run

Python 3.11 or newer, and nothing else.

pip install paraphe

In a checkout, the same install inside a virtual environment, with a configuration file to start from:

python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install .

cp config.example.toml paraphe.toml     # then fill in two values you make up
.venv/bin/paraphe --config paraphe.toml

Those two values are yours:

With pip install paraphe and no checkout, create paraphe.toml with those two lines; Paraphe reads it from the directory it runs in.

Paraphe ready: mcp http://127.0.0.1:8787/mcp answer-path on

To send decisions to your phone:

1. Open Telegram's BotFather, run /newbot, and keep the token it gives you private.

2. Open the new bot and send it /start. Find your own numeric Telegram user id using a user-info bot you trust.

3. Set bot_token and owner_telegram_id in paraphe.toml, then check the pair before starting the server:

   .venv/bin/paraphe check telegram
   .venv/bin/paraphe --config paraphe.toml

The check names the bot and sends a plain setup message to your phone. It does not print the token or create a decision card. If delivery is refused, verify the numeric id and make sure you opened a private chat with the bot first. Without the two phone settings, cards are printed where you are looking, which is what the local run above does.

Or run the container, with the data location mounted:

mkdir -p paraphe-data && chmod 0777 paraphe-data
docker build -t paraphe .
docker run --rm -v "$PWD/paraphe-data:/data" \
  -e PARAPHE_MCP_CREATE_BEARER=... -e PARAPHE_OWNER_ANSWER_TOKEN=... paraphe

It binds loopback inside the container, because the answer path refuses a non-loopback bind. To reach it from outside, configure the phone destination (a bot token and your Telegram id) and set PARAPHE_MCP_HOST=0.0.0.0; the answer path is then off, and taps arrive on the phone.

Related MCP server: call-a-human-mcp

The loop

ask → you see the card → you answer → the asking agent resumes

The answer returns through the ask itself: the call may wait (wait_seconds), paraphe wait can hold the card's lifetime, and any run that missed both drains the answer from the store at its next boundary. Nothing has to be said in chat.

On the phone the card is ordered rich text, not a wall of prose: it names who is asking and from where (agent, runtime, repository, worktree, ticket), bolds its title, numbers the choices with their one-line notes and marks what is recommended, and lists the limits, links and expiry. A long-press reply answers it in your own words — or asks a question — and that text returns to the exact session that asked.

The approval card as it arrives on the phone.

docs/demo/console-loop.md is a recorded run of exactly that, on a clean checkout, with no third-party credential and no external service: the agent asks, the card is printed, the agent's own credential is refused when it tries to answer, the owner answers, and the agent picks the answer up.

The line this product draws

The credential an agent holds cannot answer a decision. It creates and it reads. Answering needs the owner's credential, on a path the agent's cannot reach. An inbox an agent can approve on its behalf is not an owner-decision inbox, so this is not configurable.

Documentation

Dependencies

The runtime imports nothing outside the Python standard library, so using Paraphe pulls no dependency tree. Installing it fetches the build backend once, at install time, and nothing after that.

Licence

AGPL-3.0-or-later (LICENSE). Modify it and serve it to other people over a network and you must offer them your modified source; nothing here obliges a company to publish the application it builds on top.

Where your data lives

Cards are a SQLite file in your per-user data directory ($XDG_DATA_HOME/paraphe, else ~/.local/share/paraphe) unless you set store_path. The directory is created 0700 and the file 0600, and Paraphe never reads or writes outside that location.

Upgrading from a release that used /var/lib/paraphe: stop the running Paraphe server, then copy its existing store into the current per-user location:

paraphe store relocate

The command refuses to overwrite a store at the target, verifies the SQLite copy before installing it, and leaves the old store in place as a backup. To remove the old store instead of keeping it as a backup, run the same command with --move:

paraphe store relocate --move

Paraphe refuses normal startup with the new default while a store exists only at /var/lib/paraphe/inbox.sqlite; this prevents an upgrade from quietly beginning a second, empty inbox. Setting store_path to the old location remains available when relocation is not wanted.