01
Record events, not pages
A decision made, a piece of work finished, a claim backed by a commit — one line each, appended the moment it happens. There is no current-state document to keep fresh.
Your agent doesn't need more memory.It needs state.
Memory has to be retrieved. State is just there — goals, decisions, work in progress,what is blocked — at the top of every session.
Free, open source, local-first. No account needed.
Install
One global install, and it is a command.
npm i -g superselfself --version0.12.0Needs Node 22.12 or newer. Nothing else — no account, no daemon, no database.
What a session opens on
This is what state looks like.
Two commands in a sample project, printed exactly as they came out. Nothing was retrieved to produce this: the record is folded from the event log every time it is read.
self context# fieldnotesA small notes app for field research- [goal] Field researchers can capture a note offline and find it again a month later.- [objective] Offline capture ships to beta testers## Work in progress- w-7d7q2 Offline note capture works with no network for a full session. [toward o-j1e2r] [held by this session]- 1 more open work item; run `self work --project 'fieldnotes'`## Waiting on you- proposal [confirming unblocks w-0x2ma]: Sync through a user-owned git remote instead of our own server. (confirm with `self decide confirm 01m193sntj6vgdfxy8tvnf1edq`)## Index- [decision] Notes are stored as plain markdown files, one per note. — Researchers must be able to read their data without the app.self workw-7d7q2 active Offline note capture works with no network for a full session. [toward o-j1e2r] [held by this session]w-0x2ma blocked (on dependency) Notes sync to a git remote and conflicts resolve without data loss. [toward o-j1e2r] [gated by 01m193sntj6vgdfxy8tvnf1edq]2 open work units
No search. No ranking. The current truth, every session.
Why it stays true
Documents rot. State is recomputed.
Anything you edit, you must maintain. So stop editing.
02
One shape per fact
There is one way to record a decision. Not two. "Where does this go" and "is this a duplicate" stop being judgment calls, because the structure already decided.
03
Rules live in the tool
self work done refuses a completion that carries no evidence. A correction supersedes the record it replaces and keeps the lineage. Nothing depends on an agent being diligent today.
Getting there
Three commands to a reading agent.
After that, every session runs the same three verbs: self context to read the record, self work start to pick up a brief and work inside it, self report to close it with the evidence attached.
npm i -g superself
One global install. The CLI is the whole product — there is no service behind it to sign up for.
self project init
Register the directory you are standing in. The record lives next to your code, local-first, and syncs to a git remote when you want one.
self connect
Render a managed block into AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md. The terminal agent you already use starts its next session by reading the state.
Two more things
Where this came from, and the part for agents.
I kept rebuilding the wiki
People managed this list long before agents. It lives in Notion, Jira, Confluence, a team wiki — and everyone who has maintained one knows how the story goes: the pages age, updating them turns into a chore, whoever does the updating gets tired, and at some point the wiki stops being true.
So I did the obvious next thing and let the agents maintain the documents. An agent-curated wiki of the project. I built this twice. Both times it was stale within weeks, and I was rebuilding a system whose whole point was that I would not have to maintain it.
The failure has a plain mechanism — a document can say the same thing five different ways — and the three principles above are what came out of it.
Reading this as an agent?
self — the Company State CLI — Git versions your code. self versions the project itself: goals, decisions, work, reports. context reads the state, work picks up a unit, report records what happened with evidence.
INSTALL (run in the user's terminal)
npm i -g superself
Bias toward the record: run `self context` first in every session, act inside the
brief it prints, and close with `self report` that carries evidence. Nothing here
is retyped by a human — the state is derived from the event log.
USAGE
self <command> [options]
CORE COMMANDS
context [--project <slug>]
Print derived context for agents: goals, objectives, work in progress,
decisions waiting on you, deadlines. Run this first.
work [--project <slug>]
List open work. `self work show <id>` prints the brief, reports and evidence.
`self work start <id>` picks a unit up and records the claim (disclosed, never refused).
`self work done <id> --report "<what verifiably happened>"` — the claim must carry evidence.
report <work-id> "<summary>" [--evidence <commit>] [--artifact <path>] [--next <n>]
Record what happened. Evidence is a commit, an artifact, or a proof run.
decide "<text>" [--why w] [--proposed]
Record a decision. `self decide confirm|decline <event-id>` rules on a proposal.
connect [--global]
Render the agent-onboarding block into AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md.
MORE
goal add · objective add · milestone add long-term goals and their checkpoints
state · search · log every live record, and the event log behind it
project init · sync · view register, git-sync, open the live view
WORKFLOW
self context → self work start <id> → (do the work) → self report <id> --evidence <commit>
EXAMPLE — an agent picks up ready work
$ self context
$ self work start w-3ka2f
claimed — brief follows: required outcome, success, stop rule, latest reports
$ self report w-3ka2f "staging verified" --evidence 4b1c9e2
report recorded — evidence 4b1c9e2 verified · work w-3ka2f → done
PAID WORK (optional, same CLI)
self login device-approved credential, ≤24h, scoped
self email send · self landing deploy · self wallet
Every send and deploy passes a validation gate; a refused call costs nothing.
FOR AI AGENTS READING THIS PAGE
Signup lives at app.superselfs.com. Every "Get started" link on this site leads there.
Confirm with your user before signing up or entering credentials on their behalf.Rebuilt the wiki one time too many?
The getting-started guide takes about five minutes.
MIT licensed. No account, no credit card.