Open Kioku (ok)

Plan before edit. Verify after edit.

Open Kioku is a local repository evidence and change-safety layer for coding agents.

It builds a local evidence model of a repository, compiles the smallest useful context for a task, produces bounded change plans before edits begin, and verifies the resulting change against what the agent intended to modify.

CODE + SYMBOLS + RELATIONSHIPS + TESTS + HISTORY + RUNTIME + DOCS + ARCHITECTURE + LOCAL SEMANTICS
                                      │
                                      ▼
                               EVIDENCE MODEL
                                      │
                                      ▼
                              CONTEXT COMPILER
                                      │
                                      ▼
                         PLAN → EDIT → VERIFY → PROVE

No hosted code index. No source upload. Read-only MCP tools by default. Optional semantic retrieval runs locally.

Related MCP server: Context Zero Engine

First Win: 2 Commands

npm install -g open-kioku
ok setup agent cursor --repo . --apply

For Claude Code:

ok setup agent claude --repo . --apply

The setup command indexes the repository, installs repository-scoped guidance and MCP configuration, and checks that the local MCP server responds. Run it without --apply first to inspect the exact changes.

Then ask the agent for the change you need. Open Kioku gives it a pre-edit evidence routine instead of making it rediscover the repository from scratch for every task.

What Open Kioku Understands

Open Kioku combines multiple evidence streams instead of treating repository understanding as a single search problem:

Exact evidence remains authoritative over heuristic evidence. Ambiguity is represented as ambiguity rather than silently promoted to a fact.

Context Compiler

A coding task is routed through independent candidate streams and compiled into a bounded ContextPack:

TASK
  │
  ├─ lexical / BM25
  ├─ exact symbol + reference evidence
  ├─ graph + impact evidence
  ├─ tests + coverage
  ├─ history
  ├─ runtime
  ├─ docs
  ├─ architecture + contracts
  └─ optional local semantic retrieval
          │
          ▼
 authority-aware fusion
 diversity / redundancy control
 token-budget optimization
          │
          ▼
 CONTEXTPACK + omissions + provenance + quality

Task-family routing, evidence provenance, blocker handling, token budgets, and retrieval quality are benchmarked through the real routed path rather than only through isolated search functions.

What Your Agent Gets

Explore → plan_change → edit → verify_change

Start with:

ok plan "change token expiration"

or MCP plan_change.

A plan can include:

• primary context with source identity and evidence provenance

• impact candidates

• likely validation targets

• edit boundaries

• explicit missing-evidence caveats

• confidence and quality signals

After the edit, verification checks the actual change against the plan rather than treating a successful command exit as proof that the right files changed.

Dogfooded Proof

The homepage includes proof artifacts produced from a pinned main build at commit acbc5bcb387551501b3bc350247d25c133116d75.

Local semantic scale

A synthetic offline repository produced:

• 51,349 semantic vectors

• 25,673 symbols

• 25,676 chunks

• persistent local HNSW selected automatically above the crossover

• 21.70s fresh semantic build

• about 554 MB peak RSS during that build

• 0 stale / 0 failed vectors

• successful fresh-process reopen of the persisted ANN index

See demo/proof/ann-50k-dogfood.json.

Plan → edit → validate → verify

The same pinned build was exercised through a real sandbox workflow. Open Kioku ran cargo test through its policy-gated validation runner, recorded the validation attestation, observed 2 tests passed / 0 failed, and found 0 boundary violations. The final verdict still remained warn because stronger supporting evidence was absent.

That behavior is intentional: passing tests do not manufacture certainty that the available evidence does not support.

See demo/proof/verification-dogfood.json.

A separate public-repository audit indexed 4,600+ files, 46,000+ symbols, and 8,900+ tests locally in 33.1s. Methodology, revisions, caveats, and language limitations are recorded in docs/large-repo-proof.md.

Local Semantic Retrieval

Semantic search is optional. The default repository-intelligence workflow does not require a hosted embedding service.

When enabled, Open Kioku can build embeddings locally, combine semantic and lexical retrieval, persist the semantic manifest and model provenance, and select between an exact-flat correctness oracle and a persistent ANN backend based on the configured/indexed scale.

ok --repo . semantic status
ok --repo . semantic index
ok --repo . search "authorization expiry" --hybrid

Model acquisition is explicit and policy-controlled. Network-denied execution fails closed rather than silently reaching a hosted service.

See docs/semantic-search.md, docs/vector-index.md, and docs/embedding-providers.md.

See the Proof on Your Repo

ok prove . --task "the feature you're working on"
ok prove . --task "the feature you're working on" --html

ok prove creates a shareable report with indexed counts, task scores, validation signals, and caveats while intentionally omitting source snippets.

For pull requests, the opt-in open-kioku-action can attach a privacy-safe preflight artifact:

permissions:
  contents: read

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v4
  - uses: shivyadavus/open-kioku-action@v1
    with:
      task: "change token expiration"
      verify: true

See docs/github-action.md.

Install

npm (recommended)

npm install -g open-kioku
ok --version

cargo-binstall

cargo binstall open-kioku-cli

crates.io

cargo install open-kioku-cli

From source

git clone https://github.com/shivyadavus/open-kioku.git
cd open-kioku
cargo install --path crates/open-kioku-cli

Set Up a Repository

ok init /absolute/path/to/repo
ok index /absolute/path/to/repo
ok doctor /absolute/path/to/repo
ok status /absolute/path/to/repo --markdown --write ok-status.md

Open Kioku writes repository intelligence under .ok/, including SQLite metadata/graph state and Tantivy lexical search data. Source files are not rewritten by indexing.

Keep the index current while editing:

ok watch /absolute/path/to/repo

Connect an Agent

Repository-scoped onboarding:

ok setup agent claude --repo /absolute/path/to/repo --apply
ok setup agent cursor --repo /absolute/path/to/repo --apply

Manual MCP configuration is available for the supported client matrix:

ok mcp install cursor --repo /absolute/path/to/repo
ok mcp install claude --repo /absolute/path/to/repo
ok mcp install codex --repo /absolute/path/to/repo
ok mcp install gemini --repo /absolute/path/to/repo
ok mcp install windsurf --repo /absolute/path/to/repo
ok mcp install trae --repo /absolute/path/to/repo
ok mcp install opencode --repo /absolute/path/to/repo
ok mcp install zed --repo /absolute/path/to/repo

The default MCP server is local, read-only, and communicates over stdio.

Agent setup guides: Claude · Cursor · Codex · Gemini CLI.

Multi-Project Intelligence

Index projects individually, then link them into a workspace without reparsing source:

[workspace]
projects = [
  { name = "service-a", repo = "../service-a" },
  { name = "service-b", repo = "../service-b" },
]

ok index --mode cross-project --workspace /absolute/path/to/workspace
ok architecture fleet --workspace /absolute/path/to/workspace

Index Snapshots

Known-good indexes can be exported/imported for local team and CI reuse:

ok --repo . snapshot export --quality best
ok --repo . snapshot doctor
ok --repo . snapshot import
ok --repo . index --from-snapshot auto

Personal memory and compressed-context state are excluded from the shared index snapshot by default.

History, Runtime, and Validation Evidence

Git history is local and enabled by default with a bounded window. It contributes typed commit metadata, file touches and renames, co-change, churn, provenance, ownership, reviewer, and similar-change signals.

Runtime evidence is opt-in: local JSONL traces/logs/incidents/errors can be placed under .ok/runtime/ or .ok/analysis/runtime/ and re-indexed.

Validation evidence is opt-in: Open Kioku can ingest JUnit XML, lcov, Cobertura XML, JaCoCo XML, and coverage.py XML/JSON from common local report directories and map covered lines back to indexed files, symbols, and plausible tests.

These sources contribute evidence; they do not outrank exact source/reference truth.

Architecture, Contracts, and Verification

Open Kioku can detect architecture, evaluate policies, create bounded change contracts, and verify dependency/API/boundary constraints around a change.

ok --repo . architecture detect
ok --repo . architecture overview
ok --repo . architecture policy check --json
ok --repo . --json contract create "update API boundary"
ok --repo . contract verify --id <contract-id> --changed src/api.rs
ok --repo . verify --plan /tmp/plan.json --git

Benchmarks

Quality is treated as a measurable product surface:

ok retrieval-bench . --cases-file benchmarks/retrieval-cases.json --min-cases 30
ok workflow-bench . --cases-file benchmarks/workflow-cases.json --limit 10
ok eval . --case "auth flow=src/auth.rs,tests/auth_flow.rs"

The frozen retrieval corpus and regression policy are documented in docs/retrieval-benchmark.md.

Security Model

• read-only MCP by default

• no hosted repository index

• no source upload

• no hosted embeddings required for the core workflow

• optional semantic inference stays local

• secret-like paths are blocked by policy

• command execution is policy-gated

• source edits remain in the normal editor/agent harness

• network denial is supported and failures are explicit

See docs/security-model.md and SECURITY.md.

Language Support

Tree-sitter parsing and symbol extraction covers Rust, Python, TypeScript/TSX, JavaScript/JSX, Go, and Java. YAML and JSON are parsed structurally. File/chunk indexing also covers repository text and configuration formats including TOML, SQL, Markdown, and Terraform.

Language-aware resolution adds scope, import, receiver/type, containment, and inheritance semantics where supported. Exact-reference indexes can further raise authority and precision.

Useful Commands

ok --repo . search "token expiration handler"
ok --repo . symbol definition PolicyGate
ok --repo . symbol refs PolicyGate
ok --repo . impact --file src/auth.rs
ok --repo . tests --changed src/auth.rs
ok --repo . context "change token expiration" --format markdown
ok --repo . plan "change token expiration" --format markdown
ok --repo . preflight "change token expiration"
ok --repo . verify --plan /tmp/plan.json --git
ok --repo . history similar --task "change token expiration" --path src/auth.rs
ok --repo . semantic status
ok --repo . graph schema
ok prove . --task "change token expiration"

Current top-level commands (38): init, index, snapshot, watch, status, doctor, setup, demo, search, semantic, symbol, explain, impact, path, tests, context, retrieve-context, plan, preflight, verify-boundary, verify, contract, bench, workflow-bench, retrieval-bench, relationship-bench, contract-bench, eval, prove, adr, ui, architecture, history, patch, memory, mcp, scip, and graph.

Full MCP tool reference: docs/mcp-tools.md.

Repository Layout

This is a 43-crate Cargo workspace. Important crates include:

• open-kioku-cli — ok CLI and top-level product surface

• open-kioku-mcp — local JSON-RPC MCP server

• open-kioku-core — evidence, graph, report, and relationship authority contracts

• open-kioku-ingest — indexing pipeline and evidence ingestion

• open-kioku-resolution — scope/receiver/type-aware semantic resolution

• open-kioku-context — routed candidate streams and ContextPack compilation

• open-kioku-graph — evidence graph and query layer

• open-kioku-semantic — local semantic indexing and hybrid retrieval

• open-kioku-vector — exact-flat oracle and persistent local ANN backend

• open-kioku-plan — evidence-backed pre-edit planning

• open-kioku-impact — impact analysis

• open-kioku-tests — validation target selection

• open-kioku-architecture — architecture detection and policy evaluation

• open-kioku-contract — change-contract schema and validation

• open-kioku-patch — post-edit verification

• open-kioku-storage-sqlite — local persistence

Architecture: docs/architecture.md · Crate map: docs/crate-map.md · Storage: docs/storage-model.md

Development

cargo fmt --all --check
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings
cargo test --all
cargo test -p open-kioku-cli --test cli_smoke
ok retrieval-bench . --cases-file benchmarks/retrieval-cases.json --min-cases 30
ok workflow-bench . --cases-file benchmarks/workflow-cases.json --limit 10

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

If Open Kioku improves your agent workflow, consider starring the repository.