Agent Rewind

The flight recorder + undo button for AI agents.

AI agents take real, irreversible actions — they delete files, send emails, call APIs. When one goes off the rails, there is no black box to read and no undo button to press. Agent Rewind is both: a transparent proxy between your agent and its tools that records every action, snapshots state before anything destructive runs, holds oversized operations for human approval, and gives you per-action Undo, Rewind-to-a-point-in-time, and a kill switch the agent cannot talk its way around.

See it in 60 seconds

git clone https://github.com/moholo-founder/agent-rewind.git
cd agent-rewind && pnpm install && pnpm demo

Open http://localhost:4820. A scripted rogue agent wipes a 200-message inbox, deletes files, and queues embarrassing emails — then you press ⏪ Rewind and watch everything come back, with a per-action report that never claims more than it restored.

Related MCP server: Belay

Use it with your agent

Any MCP client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, ...) — one config block:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "agent-rewind": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "agent-rewind"] }
  }
}

Every tool call your agent makes through the proxy is journaled, snapshotted, policy-gated, and reversible from the timeline UI at http://localhost:4821.

Native Claude Code sessions (built-in Bash/Edit/Write, no MCP involved) — one plugin install:

/plugin marketplace add moholo-founder/agent-rewind
/plugin install agent-rewind@agent-rewind

or wire a single project by hand:

agent-rewind hooks install    # wires this project's .claude/settings.json
agent-rewind ui               # operator console

File edits become undoable (snapshotted before they land) — and so do Bash commands: the project tree is snapshotted before each command (content-addressed dedup + an mtime cache keep it cheap) and diffed after, so Undo restores exactly the files a command modified, created, or deleted. Dangerous shell patterns escalate to an explicit permission prompt, and the STOP switch refuses every native tool until a human resumes.

Honest coverage boundary: Bash undo covers file effects inside the project directory (skipping node_modules-style dirs, files >5MB, and symlinks — skips are noted in the journal). Processes started, network calls made, and writes outside the project are not reversible and are reported as such. Hooks mode is a recorder and gate, not a sandbox.

What you get

• Live timeline — every action as it happens: who, what, blast radius, risk class, status, before/after diffs.

• Undo — one click restores what an action destroyed, byte-identical, from content-addressed snapshots captured before execution.

• Rewind — pick a point in time, preview exactly what will be undone, confirm, and unwind it all in strict reverse order of execution.

• Kill switch — STOP refuses every side-effecting call until a human resumes. The flag lives in Agent Rewind's own storage, outside the agent's context — context compaction and creative reasoning cannot clear it.

• Blast-radius holds — actions over a per-connector threshold (delete 40 files, wipe 200 messages) wait in an approval tray instead of executing.

• Append-only journal — tamper-resistant evidence (SQLite triggers refuse deletes and rewrites), with secrets redacted at write time.

• Honest failure — an undo that fails says so, loudly, per action. Fully restored is only ever claimed when it is true.

How it works

[ agent / MCP client ]
        │  MCP
        ▼
  Agent Rewind proxy — classify → gate (allow / hold / block) →
                       snapshot pre-state → execute → journal + live UI
        │  MCP
        ▼
[ your tool servers: filesystem, email, ... ]

Reversibility is per-connector: each tool declares its class (read / reversible / destructive) and ships a compensator — capture what the action will destroy, and how to restore it. Reads pass through untouched. Unknown tools are held for approval, never silently executed. v1 ships a sandboxed filesystem connector and a self-contained mock email connector ( delayed outbox with a recall window — after delivery, undo honestly reports not-reversible). The interface is designed so real connectors (Gmail, Slack, Stripe) drop in without touching core.

Real outbound connectors (opt-in)

Two connectors talk to the real world, and both default to hold everything: with holdThreshold: 0, no email is sent and no post goes public until an operator clicks Approve in the tray.

• SMTP email — set AGENT_REWIND_SMTP_HOST / PORT / USER / PASS / FROM (SECURE optional; inferred from port). A delivered email has no undo, and Agent Rewind says so: the compensator archives the exact draft as a snapshot and reports not-reversible honestly.

• X (Twitter) — set AGENT_REWIND_X_API_KEY / API_SECRET / ACCESS_TOKEN / ACCESS_SECRET (OAuth 1.0a user context, official API v2). Posts are reversible: undo deletes the tweet, resolved through a persisted post log that survives restarts.

Credentials live only in the connector server's environment — they never appear in tool arguments, so they can never reach the journal.

Zero native dependencies — pure JavaScript on Node 22.13+ (SQLite via node:sqlite). Install is seconds, no compiler. CI-verified on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

License

Source-available under the Business Source License 1.1, © 2026 Moholo Inc. Free for individuals, nonprofits, education, and organizations under 25 people / US $2M revenue — including production. Larger organizations need a commercial license (founders@moholo.co). Every version becomes Apache 2.0 open source four years after release. See TERMS.md and CONTRIBUTING.md.

Roadmap

• More real connectors: Gmail, Slack, Stripe (OAuth), with per-field redaction

• Gate verdict + reasoning recorded on every journal row, not just held ones

• OpenTelemetry exporter — one span per tool call

• Enterprise: audit export, SSO, retention policies, multi-operator

• HTTP/SSE MCP transport; held-action persistence across restarts

Developer docs, architecture details, and the build history live in docs/DEVELOPMENT.md.