APE

APE turns AI coding from session-driven improvisation into durable, evidence-gated engineering runs. It keeps Plan → Build → Ship state outside the chat, resumes across sessions, and accepts progress only when the working tree, tests, reviews, and configured gates support it.

Under the hood, APE is a deterministic runtime for Claude Code and Codex that coordinates each host's native agents. The scheduler—not the model—owns stage order, retries, lane selection, receipts, recovery, and merge decisions. Agents and tooling can still be wrong; APE reduces the chance that an unsupported claim advances by requiring the evidence it knows how to verify.

Current status

• Claude Code and Codex are supported end to end.

• The public surface is seven skills backed by four MCP tools.

• Runs are explicit. Installing APE does not start agents or change a repository.

• GitHub is the only shipping provider.

• Node.js 22 or newer is required.

• Both public packages install from this repository's marketplace files and launch the bundled MCP server locally over stdio. A hosted broker and universal cloud-directory submission are outside the 2.17 release scope.

• Codex IDE integrations and ChatGPT web, mobile, and cloud runtimes are not supported in 2.17.

Related MCP server: claude-swarm

Install

Claude Code

Run these commands inside Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add AAWWCC/ape
/plugin install ape@ape
/reload-plugins

Codex CLI

Run these commands in a terminal:

codex plugin marketplace add AAWWCC/ape
codex plugin add ape@ape

Both hosts install an allowlisted, host-specific package from plugins/. The package starts dist/ape-mcp.bundle.mjs with local Node and communicates over stdio; it does not send APE state to an APE-operated service.

Compatibility

Node.js 22 and 24 are exercised on Windows, Linux, and macOS. Provider availability, host plugin discovery, and external editor connections remain host/version/environment dependent.

For development from this checkout, rebuild the packages before using the Codex cache wrapper:

npm ci
npm run bundle
npm run package:plugins
npm run reinstall:codex

The wrapper validates a small allowlisted package, promotes it under a new immutable cache version, and leaves both the source manifest and versions used by open tasks unchanged. Start a new Codex task after reinstalling.

Use

APE is useful when work must survive session boundaries, has meaningful tests or review gates, or needs an auditable Plan → Build → Ship record. It is usually excessive for a one-line local edit, throwaway exploration, or work whose cost is lower than setting up claims and evidence. Use debug or spike for bounded read-only investigation; do not start a stateful run merely because the plugin is installed.

Invoke a skill explicitly:

/ape:run Add optimistic locking to invoice updates
/ape:status
/ape:resume

Available skills:

Every state-changing skill requires explicit operator invocation. history, roadmap, run, resume, config, and override are also explicit-only at the host-discovery layer; only the read-only status skill may be selected implicitly when relevant.

Pipelines

The building lanes are:

• mechanical: documentation, generated output, non-behavioral configuration, or tracked data.

• fast: behavioral work with at most six production files and no high-risk trigger.

• full: larger or sensitive work, including security, auth, migrations, dependencies, public APIs, schemas, concurrency, and destructive operations.

auto lets the runtime classify the run. Scope may escalate during a run, but it never downgrades.

Behavioral phase work in the fast and full lanes follows a test-first protocol: a test writer is assigned failing tests in test_paths, then a separate implementer owns production claimed_paths, and read-only reviewers judge the result. APE verifies the artifacts and receipts available to it; it cannot guarantee that a test is meaningful or a review is correct. This protocol does not describe mechanical work, read-only debug/spike, or land, which reviews and ships an existing diff without editing it. High-risk runs add a security review. Each failed stage can be retried once; a blocking review gets one remediation cycle.

Gates and shipping

APE verifies receipt integrity, path scope, tree identity, targeted tests, plugin validity when relevant, the configured suite, conditional security evidence, and remote checks. Local suites and remote checks can rest in gating or shipping; next advances either watch, and wait_ms can keep one call open for a bounded period.

By default, a green run is held at merge until the audited ship action re-proves the gates. With shipping.auto_merge: true, APE instead pushes the run branch, opens or reuses a GitHub pull request, waits for required checks, and squash-merges.

Configuration

Configuration is a sparse overlay at .ape/runtime/config.json. Start with:

/ape:config init
/ape:config doctor

init detects common test runners and proposes commands; it does not apply them without approval. Use wire to opt into the full APE statusline on Claude or Codex's closest native footer. LARP MODE notifications are available on both hosts and are off by default. Public packages contain no sound files; operators may configure their own files, and a private package overlay may provide the closed package-local sound manifest described in the configuration guide.

See configuration, pipelines, and the documentation index.

Development

npm ci
npm run typecheck
npm run test:v2
npm run bundle
npm run package:plugins
npm run package:check
npm run package:reproducible
npm run public:check
npm run eval:prompts:check
npm run validate

npm run release:artifacts produces the two host tarballs, checksum ledger, release manifest, and SPDX SBOM under release/. npm run release:reproducible builds that set twice and compares every artifact digest. Tagged releases run the same gates, a clean full-source export, and GitHub provenance attestation before publication. The credential-free prompt-evaluation check validates the synthetic scenario matrix, prompt hashes, schema, scorer, and release thresholds. It makes no model calls. Live prompt evaluation has separate explicit paid-call guards, and npm run eval:prompts:verify verifies a supplied result artifact offline; see the evaluation guide.

npm test runs the standalone suite with six workers. When several agents may test concurrently, use npm run test:agent -- <paths...> for the three-worker profile. Run npm run test:claude-schema when changing Claude plugin schemas.

Pull-request CI exercises package generation and local MCP startup on Node 22 and 24 across Linux, macOS, and Windows, performs clean isolated marketplace installs for both hosts, and runs the full suite on Ubuntu. Once the repository is public, a least-privilege CodeQL workflow runs on pushes, pull requests, and weekly analysis. Dependabot alerts and security updates cover npm and GitHub Actions; routine version-update pull requests stay disabled for this solo-maintained repository. CI and release automation do not perform live paid prompt evaluations.

License

APE's source code and original project materials are available under MIT. Public plugin packages contain no audio. The private source overlay's optional third-party notification sounds are excluded from the MIT grant; see third-party notices.

Use GitHub Issues for reproducible defects, GitHub Discussions for questions and ideas, and the security policy for suspected vulnerabilities.