spine

Spine is the ledger that agent sessions file into: which sessions are open, on which plan, holding which files, and what became of each task. It is a single SQLite file, an MCP server over stdio that reads and writes it, and three small command-line tools: a backup, a sweep, and a board of who is working on what. Alongside it ship a VS Code extension that shows that board and opens session tabs, and launch profiles that run a session against a local model in a config dir of its own.

It records; it does not act. No tool in it runs a command, writes a file or touches a repository. A file claim is a declaration that makes a collision visible, not a lock that prevents one. A session that was never closed is marked reaped — the sweep saw a dead process, not an outcome — and is never marked completed or abandoned on its behalf.

Where things are

• What spine does — three figures: how the pieces connect, a session from open to

receipt, and how a session row knows its transcript and its window.

• README — what spine is, how to run it, how the MCP tools map to the modules, the

licence, and the measured state of the repository on the day the README was last verified.

• MCP tool reference — every tool the server publishes, with its parameters. Generated

by asking the running server for tools/list, not by reading its source.

Status

Private and pre-1.0. The code was extracted from the substrate repository on 2026-09-02 with its commit history preserved. Since 2026-09-06 this repository is the one live sessions talk to: the MCP registration, the launchd reaper and substrate's own imports all point here, and the copy that lived inside substrate was deleted on 2026-09-07. The README records how that was measured. The repository, Portll/spine, is private.

Zero runtime dependencies: node:sqlite and the standard library, Node 22.5 or later.

Licence

Dual-licensed: the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later by default, and a commercial licence available on request for anyone who cannot take it under the AGPL. The licence page states when each applies and carries the AGPL text in full.