GitHub - steveyegge/gastown: Gas Town - multi-agent workspace manager

16 min read Original article ↗

Multi-agent orchestration system for Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, and other AI agents with persistent work tracking

Overview

Gas Town is a workspace manager that lets you coordinate multiple AI coding agents (Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Gemini, and others) working on different tasks. Instead of losing context when agents restart, Gas Town persists work state in git-backed hooks, enabling reliable multi-agent workflows.

What Problem Does This Solve?

Challenge Gas Town Solution
Agents lose context on restart Work persists in git-backed hooks
Manual agent coordination Built-in mailboxes, identities, and handoffs
4-10 agents become chaotic Scale comfortably to 20-30 agents
Work state lost in agent memory Work state stored in Beads ledger

Architecture

graph TB
    Mayor[The Mayor<br/>AI Coordinator]
    Town[Town Workspace<br/>~/gt/]

    Town --> Mayor
    Town --> Rig1[Rig: Project A]
    Town --> Rig2[Rig: Project B]

    Rig1 --> Crew1[Crew Member<br/>Your workspace]
    Rig1 --> Hooks1[Hooks<br/>Persistent storage]
    Rig1 --> Polecats1[Polecats<br/>Worker agents]

    Rig2 --> Crew2[Crew Member]
    Rig2 --> Hooks2[Hooks]
    Rig2 --> Polecats2[Polecats]

    Hooks1 -.git worktree.-> GitRepo1[Git Repository]
    Hooks2 -.git worktree.-> GitRepo2[Git Repository]

    style Mayor fill:#e1f5ff,color:#000000
    style Town fill:#f0f0f0,color:#000000
    style Rig1 fill:#fff4e1,color:#000000
    style Rig2 fill:#fff4e1,color:#000000
Loading

Core Concepts

The Mayor 🎩

Your primary AI coordinator. The Mayor is a Claude Code instance with full context about your workspace, projects, and agents. Start here - just tell the Mayor what you want to accomplish.

Town 🏘️

Your workspace directory (e.g., ~/gt/). Contains all projects, agents, and configuration.

Rigs 🏗️

Project containers. Each rig wraps a git repository and manages its associated agents.

Crew Members 👤

Your personal workspace within a rig. Where you do hands-on work.

Polecats 🦨

Worker agents with persistent identity but ephemeral sessions. Spawned for tasks, sessions end on completion, but identity and work history persist.

Hooks 🪝

Git worktree-based persistent storage for agent work. Survives crashes and restarts.

Convoys 🚚

Work tracking units. Bundle multiple beads that get assigned to agents. Convoys labeled mountain get autonomous stall detection and smart skip logic for epic-scale execution.

Beads Integration 📿

Git-backed issue tracking system that stores work state as structured data.

Bead IDs (also called issue IDs) use a prefix + 5-character alphanumeric format (e.g., gt-abc12, hq-x7k2m). The prefix indicates the item's origin or rig. Commands like gt sling and gt convoy accept these IDs to reference specific work items. The terms "bead" and "issue" are used interchangeably—beads are the underlying data format, while issues are the work items stored as beads.

Molecules 🧬

Workflow templates that coordinate multi-step work. Formulas (TOML definitions) are instantiated as molecules with tracked steps. Two modes: root-only wisps (steps materialized at runtime, lightweight) and poured wisps (steps materialized as sub-wisps with checkpoint recovery). See Molecules.

Monitoring: Witness, Deacon, Dogs 🐕

A three-tier watchdog system keeps agents healthy:

  • Witness - Per-rig lifecycle manager. Monitors polecats, detects stuck agents, triggers recovery, manages session cleanup.
  • Deacon - Background supervisor running continuous patrol cycles across all rigs.
  • Dogs - Infrastructure workers dispatched by the Deacon for maintenance tasks (e.g., Boot for triage).

Refinery 🏭

Per-rig merge queue processor. When polecats complete work via gt done, the Refinery batches merge requests, runs verification gates, and merges to main using a Bors-style bisecting queue. Failed MRs are isolated and either fixed inline or re-dispatched.

Escalation 🚨

Severity-routed issue escalation. Agents that hit blockers escalate via gt escalate, which creates tracked beads routed through the Deacon, Mayor, and (if needed) Overseer. Severity levels: CRITICAL (P0), HIGH (P1), MEDIUM (P2). See Escalation.

Scheduler ⏱️

Config-driven capacity governor for polecat dispatch. Prevents API rate limit exhaustion by batching dispatch under configurable concurrency limits. Default is direct dispatch; set scheduler.max_polecats to enable deferred dispatch with the daemon. See Scheduler.

Seance 👻

Session discovery and continuation. Discovers previous agent sessions via .events.jsonl logs, enabling agents to query their predecessors for context and decisions from earlier work.

gt seance                       # List discoverable predecessor sessions
gt seance --talk <id> -p "What did you find?"  # One-shot question

Wasteland 🏜️

Federated work coordination network linking Gas Towns through DoltHub. Rigs post wanted items, claim work from other towns, submit completion evidence, and earn portable reputation via multi-dimensional stamps. See Wasteland.

New to Gas Town? See the Glossary for a complete guide to terminology and concepts.

Installation

Prerequisites

Setup (Docker-Compose below)

# Install Gas Town
$ brew install gastown                                    # Homebrew (recommended)
$ npm install -g @gastown/gt                              # npm
$ go install github.com/steveyegge/gastown/cmd/gt@latest  # From source (macOS/Linux)

# Windows (or if go install fails): clone and build manually
$ git clone https://github.com/steveyegge/gastown.git && cd gastown
$ go build -o gt.exe ./cmd/gt
$ mv gt.exe $HOME/go/bin/  # or add gastown to PATH

# If using go install, add Go binaries to PATH (add to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc)
export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/go/bin"

# Create workspace with git initialization
gt install ~/gt --git
cd ~/gt

# Add your first project
gt rig add myproject https://github.com/you/repo.git

# Create your crew workspace
gt crew add yourname --rig myproject
cd myproject/crew/yourname

# Start the Mayor session (your main interface)
gt mayor attach

Docker Compose

export GIT_USER="<your name>"
export GIT_EMAIL="<your email>"
export FOLDER="/Users/you/code"
export DASHBOARD_PORT=8080  # optional, host port for the web dashboard

docker compose build              # only needed on first run or after code changes
docker compose up -d

docker compose exec gastown zsh   # or bash

gt up

gh auth login                     # if you want gh to work

gt mayor attach

Quick Start Guide

Getting Started

Run

gt install ~/gt --git &&
cd ~/gt &&
gt config agent list &&
gt mayor attach

and tell the Mayor what you want to build!

Basic Workflow

sequenceDiagram
    participant You
    participant Mayor
    participant Convoy
    participant Agent
    participant Hook

    You->>Mayor: Tell Mayor what to build
    Mayor->>Convoy: Create convoy with beads
    Mayor->>Agent: Sling bead to agent
    Agent->>Hook: Store work state
    Agent->>Agent: Complete work
    Agent->>Convoy: Report completion
    Mayor->>You: Summary of progress
Loading

Example: Feature Development

# 1. Start the Mayor
gt mayor attach

# 2. In Mayor session, create a convoy with bead IDs
gt convoy create "Feature X" gt-abc12 gt-def34 --notify --human

# 3. Assign work to an agent
gt sling gt-abc12 myproject

# 4. Track progress
gt convoy list

# 5. Monitor agents
gt agents

Common Workflows

Mayor Workflow (Recommended)

Best for: Coordinating complex, multi-issue work

flowchart LR
    Start([Start Mayor]) --> Tell[Tell Mayor<br/>what to build]
    Tell --> Creates[Mayor creates<br/>convoy + agents]
    Creates --> Monitor[Monitor progress<br/>via convoy list]
    Monitor --> Done{All done?}
    Done -->|No| Monitor
    Done -->|Yes| Review[Review work]
Loading

Commands:

# Attach to Mayor
gt mayor attach

# In Mayor, create convoy and let it orchestrate
gt convoy create "Auth System" gt-x7k2m gt-p9n4q --notify

# Track progress
gt convoy list

Minimal Mode (No Tmux)

Run individual runtime instances manually. Gas Town just tracks state.

gt convoy create "Fix bugs" gt-abc12   # Create convoy (sling auto-creates if skipped)
gt sling gt-abc12 myproject            # Assign to worker
claude --resume                        # Agent reads mail, runs work (Claude)
# or: codex                            # Start Codex in the workspace
gt convoy list                         # Check progress

Beads Formula Workflow

Best for: Predefined, repeatable processes

Formulas are TOML-defined workflows embedded in the gt binary (source in internal/formula/formulas/).

Example Formula (internal/formula/formulas/release.formula.toml):

description = "Standard release process"
formula = "release"
version = 1

[vars.version]
description = "The semantic version to release (e.g., 1.2.0)"
required = true

[[steps]]
id = "bump-version"
title = "Bump version"
description = "Run ./scripts/bump-version.sh {{version}}"

[[steps]]
id = "run-tests"
title = "Run tests"
description = "Run make test"
needs = ["bump-version"]

[[steps]]
id = "build"
title = "Build"
description = "Run make build"
needs = ["run-tests"]

[[steps]]
id = "create-tag"
title = "Create release tag"
description = "Run git tag -a v{{version}} -m 'Release v{{version}}'"
needs = ["build"]

[[steps]]
id = "publish"
title = "Publish"
description = "Run ./scripts/publish.sh"
needs = ["create-tag"]

Execute:

# List available formulas
bd formula list

# Run a formula with variables
bd cook release --var version=1.2.0

# Create formula instance for tracking
bd mol pour release --var version=1.2.0

Manual Convoy Workflow

Best for: Direct control over work distribution

# Create convoy manually
gt convoy create "Bug Fixes" --human

# Add issues to existing convoy
gt convoy add hq-cv-abc gt-m3k9p gt-w5t2x

# Assign to specific agents
gt sling gt-m3k9p myproject/my-agent

# Check status
gt convoy show

Runtime Configuration

Gas Town supports multiple AI coding runtimes. Per-rig runtime settings are in settings/config.json.

{
  "runtime": {
    "provider": "codex",
    "command": "codex",
    "args": [],
    "prompt_mode": "none"
  }
}

Notes:

  • Claude uses hooks in .claude/settings.json (managed via --settings flag) for mail injection and startup.
  • For Codex, set project_doc_fallback_filenames = ["CLAUDE.md"] in ~/.codex/config.toml so role instructions are picked up.
  • For runtimes without hooks (e.g., Codex), Gas Town sends a startup fallback after the session is ready: gt prime, optional gt mail check --inject for autonomous roles, and gt nudge deacon session-started.
  • GitHub Copilot (copilot) is a built-in preset using --yolo for autonomous mode. It uses executable lifecycle hooks in .github/hooks/gastown.json (same events as Claude: sessionStart, userPromptSubmitted, preToolUse, sessionEnd). Uses a 5-second ready delay instead of prompt detection. Requires a Copilot seat and org-level CLI policy. See docs/INSTALLING.md.

Key Commands

Workspace Management

gt install <path>           # Initialize workspace
gt rig add <name> <repo>    # Add project
gt rig list                 # List projects
gt crew add <name> --rig <rig>  # Create crew workspace

Agent Operations

gt agents                   # List active agents
gt sling <bead-id> <rig>    # Assign work to agent
gt sling <bead-id> <rig> --agent cursor   # Override runtime for this sling/spawn
gt mayor attach             # Start Mayor session
gt mayor start --agent auggie           # Run Mayor with a specific agent alias
gt prime                    # Context recovery (run inside existing session)
gt feed                     # Real-time activity feed (TUI)
gt feed --problems          # Start in problems view (stuck agent detection)

Built-in agent presets: claude, gemini, codex, cursor, auggie, amp, opencode, copilot, pi, omp

Convoy (Work Tracking)

gt convoy create <name> [issues...]   # Create convoy with issues
gt convoy list              # List all convoys
gt convoy show [id]         # Show convoy details
gt convoy add <convoy-id> <issue-id...>  # Add issues to convoy

Configuration

# Set custom agent command
gt config agent set claude-glm "claude-glm --model glm-4"
gt config agent set codex-low "codex --thinking low"

# Set default agent
gt config default-agent claude-glm

Monitoring & Health

gt escalate -s HIGH "description"  # Escalate a blocker
gt escalate list               # List open escalations
gt scheduler status            # Show scheduler state
gt seance                      # Discover previous sessions
gt seance --talk <id>          # Query a predecessor session

Beads Integration

bd formula list             # List formulas
bd cook <formula>           # Execute formula
bd mol pour <formula>       # Create trackable instance
bd mol list                 # List active instances

Wasteland Federation

gt wl join <remote>            # Join a wasteland
gt wl browse                   # View wanted board
gt wl claim <id>               # Claim work
gt wl done <id> --evidence <url>  # Submit completion

Cooking Formulas

Gas Town includes built-in formulas for common workflows. See internal/formula/formulas/ for available recipes.

Activity Feed

gt feed launches an interactive terminal dashboard for monitoring all agent activity in real-time. It combines beads activity, agent events, and merge queue updates into a three-panel TUI:

  • Agent Tree - Hierarchical view of all agents grouped by rig and role
  • Convoy Panel - In-progress and recently-landed convoys
  • Event Stream - Chronological feed of creates, completions, slings, nudges, and more
gt feed                      # Launch TUI dashboard
gt feed --problems           # Start in problems view
gt feed --plain              # Plain text output (no TUI)
gt feed --window             # Open in dedicated tmux window
gt feed --since 1h           # Events from last hour

Navigation: j/k to scroll, Tab to switch panels, 1/2/3 to jump to a panel, ? for help, q to quit.

Problems View

At scale (20-50+ agents), spotting stuck agents in the activity stream becomes difficult. The problems view surfaces agents needing human intervention by analyzing structured beads data.

Press p in gt feed (or start with gt feed --problems) to toggle the problems view, which groups agents by health state:

State Condition
GUPP Violation Hooked work with no progress for an extended period
Stalled Hooked work with reduced progress
Zombie Dead tmux session
Working Active, progressing normally
Idle No hooked work

Intervention keys (in problems view): n to nudge the selected agent, h to handoff (refresh context).

Dashboard

Gas Town includes a web dashboard for monitoring your workspace. The dashboard must be run from inside a Gas Town workspace (HQ) directory.

# Start dashboard (default port 8080)
gt dashboard

# Start on a custom port
gt dashboard --port 3000

# Start and automatically open in browser
gt dashboard --open

The dashboard gives you a single-page overview of everything happening in your workspace: agents, convoys, hooks, queues, issues, and escalations. It auto-refreshes via htmx and includes a command palette for running gt commands directly from the browser.

Monitoring & Health

Gas Town uses a three-tier watchdog chain to keep agents healthy at scale:

Daemon (Go process) ← heartbeat every 3 min
    └── Boot (AI agent) ← intelligent triage
        └── Deacon (AI agent) ← continuous patrol
            └── Witnesses & Refineries ← per-rig agents

Witness (Per-Rig)

Each rig has a Witness that monitors its polecats. The Witness detects stuck agents, triggers recovery (nudge or handoff), manages session cleanup, and tracks completion. Witnesses delegate work rather than implementing it directly.

Deacon (Cross-Rig)

The Deacon runs continuous patrol cycles across all rigs, checking agent health, dispatching Dogs for maintenance tasks, and escalating issues that individual Witnesses can't resolve.

Escalation

When agents hit blockers, they escalate rather than waiting:

gt escalate -s HIGH "Description of blocker"
gt escalate list                    # List open escalations
gt escalate ack <bead-id>           # Acknowledge an escalation

Escalations route through Deacon -> Mayor -> Overseer based on severity. See Escalation design.

Merge Queue (Refinery)

The Refinery processes completed polecat work through a bisecting merge queue:

  1. Polecat runs gt done -> branch pushed, MR bead created
  2. Refinery batches pending MRs
  3. Runs verification gates on the merged stack
  4. If green: all MRs in batch merge to main
  5. If red: bisects to isolate the failing MR, merges the good ones

This is a Bors-style merge queue — polecats never push directly to main.

Scheduler

The scheduler controls polecat dispatch capacity to prevent API rate limit exhaustion:

gt config set scheduler.max_polecats 5   # Enable deferred dispatch (max 5 concurrent)
gt scheduler status                      # Show scheduler state
gt scheduler pause                       # Pause dispatch
gt scheduler resume                      # Resume dispatch

Default mode (max_polecats = -1) dispatches immediately via gt sling. When a limit is set, the daemon dispatches incrementally, respecting capacity. See Scheduler design.

Seance

Discover and query previous agent sessions:

gt seance                              # List discoverable predecessor sessions
gt seance --talk <id>                  # Full context conversation with predecessor
gt seance --talk <id> -p "Question?"   # One-shot question to predecessor

Seance discovers sessions via .events.jsonl logs, enabling agents to recover context and decisions from earlier work without re-reading entire codebases.

Wasteland Federation

The Wasteland is a federated work coordination network linking multiple Gas Towns through DoltHub:

gt wl join hop/wl-commons              # Join a wasteland
gt wl browse                           # View wanted board
gt wl claim <id>                       # Claim a wanted item
gt wl done <id> --evidence <url>       # Submit completion with evidence
gt wl post --title "Need X"            # Post new wanted item

Completions earn portable reputation via multi-dimensional stamps (quality, speed, complexity). See Wasteland guide.

Telemetry (OpenTelemetry)

Gas Town emits all agent operations as structured logs and metrics to any OTLP-compatible backend (VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaLogs by default):

# Configure OTLP endpoints
export GT_OTEL_LOGS_URL="http://localhost:9428/insert/jsonline"
export GT_OTEL_METRICS_URL="http://localhost:8428/api/v1/write"

Events emitted: session lifecycle, agent state changes, bd calls with duration, mail operations, sling/nudge/done workflows, polecat spawn/remove, formula instantiation, convoy creation, daemon restarts, and more.

Metrics include: gastown.session.starts.total, gastown.bd.calls.total, gastown.polecat.spawns.total, gastown.done.total, gastown.convoy.creates.total, and others.

See OTEL data model and OTEL architecture for the complete event schema.

Advanced Concepts

The Propulsion Principle

Gas Town uses git hooks as a propulsion mechanism. Each hook is a git worktree with:

  1. Persistent state - Work survives agent restarts
  2. Version control - All changes tracked in git
  3. Rollback capability - Revert to any previous state
  4. Multi-agent coordination - Shared through git

Hook Lifecycle

stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> Created: Agent spawned
    Created --> Active: Work assigned
    Active --> Suspended: Agent paused
    Suspended --> Active: Agent resumed
    Active --> Completed: Work done
    Completed --> Archived: Hook archived
    Archived --> [*]
Loading

MEOW (Mayor-Enhanced Orchestration Workflow)

MEOW is the recommended pattern:

  1. Tell the Mayor - Describe what you want
  2. Mayor analyzes - Breaks down into tasks
  3. Convoy creation - Mayor creates convoy with beads
  4. Agent spawning - Mayor spawns appropriate agents
  5. Work distribution - Beads slung to agents via hooks
  6. Progress monitoring - Track through convoy status
  7. Completion - Mayor summarizes results

Shell Completions

# Bash
gt completion bash > /etc/bash_completion.d/gt

# Zsh
gt completion zsh > "${fpath[1]}/_gt"

# Fish
gt completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/gt.fish

Project Roles

Role Description Primary Interface
Mayor AI coordinator gt mayor attach
Human (You) Crew member Your crew directory
Polecat Worker agent Spawned by Mayor
Witness Per-rig agent health monitor Automatic patrol
Deacon Cross-rig supervisor daemon gt patrol
Refinery Merge queue processor Automatic
Hook Persistent storage Git worktree
Convoy Work tracker gt convoy commands

Tips

  • Always start with the Mayor - It's designed to be your primary interface
  • Use convoys for coordination - They provide visibility across agents
  • Leverage hooks for persistence - Your work won't disappear
  • Create formulas for repeated tasks - Save time with Beads recipes
  • Use gt feed for live monitoring - Watch agent activity and catch stuck agents early
  • Monitor the dashboard - Get real-time visibility in the browser
  • Let the Mayor orchestrate - It knows how to manage agents

Design Documentation

For deeper technical details, see the design docs in docs/:

Topic Document
Architecture docs/design/architecture.md
Glossary docs/glossary.md
Molecules docs/concepts/molecules.md
Escalation docs/design/escalation.md
Scheduler docs/design/scheduler.md
Wasteland docs/WASTELAND.md
OTEL data model docs/otel-data-model.md
Witness design docs/design/witness-at-team-lead.md
Convoy lifecycle docs/design/convoy/
Polecat lifecycle docs/design/polecat-lifecycle-patrol.md
Plugin system docs/design/plugin-system.md
Agent providers docs/agent-provider-integration.md
Hooks docs/HOOKS.md
Installation guide docs/INSTALLING.md

Troubleshooting

Agents lose connection

Check hooks are properly initialized:

gt hooks list
gt hooks repair

Convoy stuck

Force refresh:

gt convoy refresh <convoy-id>

Mayor not responding

Restart Mayor session:

gt mayor detach
gt mayor attach

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details