Babysitter

Enforce obedience on agentic workforces. Manage extremely complex workflows through deterministic, hallucination-free self-orchestration.

---

Getting Started | Documentation | Community

---

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/8c3b0078-9396-48e8-aa43-5f40da30c20b

---

Table of Contents

• What is Babysitter?
• Prerequisites
• Installation
• First Steps
• Quick Start
• Agent Runtime CLI
• How It Works
• Why Babysitter?
• Blueprints
• Compression
• Documentation
• Contributing
• Community and Support
• License

---

What is Babysitter?

Babysitter enforces obedience to agentic workforces, enabling them to manage extremely complex tasks and workflows through deterministic, hallucination-free self-orchestration. Define your workflow in code - Babysitter enforces every step, ensures quality gates pass before progression, requires human approval at breakpoints, and records every decision in an immutable journal. Your agents do exactly what the process permits, nothing more.

As of v6, Babysitter is harness-agnostic via its Adapters runtime: the same processes run across the 12 supported AI coding harnesses, so you are not locked to a single tool. See Adapters and the harness install matrix.

---

Prerequisites

• Node.js: Version 20.0.0+ (22.x LTS recommended). The host-side adapters CLI pins a higher floor of 22.13.0+ (it loads the gateway's built-in node:sqlite, unflagged only from Node 22.13.0).
• A supported AI coding harness: any of the 12 harnesses covered in the install matrix (e.g. Claude Code — docs).
• Git: For cloning (optional)

---

Installation

Babysitter v6 has two install tracks that should not be conflated: the host-side adapters CLI for running any harness directly from your shell, and the in-session per-harness plugin for driving full orchestration runs from inside your harness. Most people want both. The package split is:

• @a5c-ai/babysitter is the recommended end-user install for the main babysitter CLI.
• @a5c-ai/adapters-cli provides the host-side adapters CLI (Node >=22.13.0) for running and managing any supported harness from your shell. See the Adapters CLI reference.
• @a5c-ai/babysitter-sdk is the public SDK/library package and the underlying implementation behind the core CLI.
• @a5c-ai/genty-platform is the optional runtime CLI for genty call, resume, start-server, tui, and other orchestration/runtime commands.
• Harness plugins such as @a5c-ai/babysitter-codex or @a5c-ai/babysitter-cursor integrate Babysitter into a specific host tool. They do not replace the core CLI packages.

For most users, install the main CLI first:

npm install -g @a5c-ai/babysitter

Prefer to drive a harness directly from your shell instead of from inside a session? Install the host-side adapters CLI and run any supported harness with one command — see the Adapters CLI reference:

npm install -g @a5c-ai/adapters-cli
adapters doctor
adapters run claude "explain this codebase"

Babysitter supports the 12 AI coding harnesses listed in the install matrix. Install the plugin for your harness of choice; the two fully-worked harnesses have dedicated pages — Claude Code and Codex. In this repository, plugins/babysitter-unified is the only maintained plugin source; harness-specific bundles are generated during build/release and are not committed:

Claude Code

Native marketplace install:

claude plugin marketplace add a5c-ai/babysitter-claude
claude plugin install --scope user babysitter@a5c.ai

Restart Claude Code, then type /skills to verify "babysit" appears.

Claude Cowork can install the same plugin. For a personal install from this repo's Claude marketplace:

1. Open Claude Desktop and switch to the Cowork tab.
2. Click Customize in the left sidebar.
3. Click Browse plugins.
4. Select Personal.
5. Click +, then choose Add marketplace from GitHub.
6. Enter https://github.com/a5c-ai/babysitter.
7. Install the Babysitter plugin from that marketplace.

For Team and Enterprise org-managed installs, owners can add plugins through Organization settings > Plugins. GitHub-synced organization marketplaces require a private or internal GitHub repository, so use a private/internal fork of this repo for that flow, or upload plugin ZIPs manually.

Plugin README

Codex CLI (Beta)

Official marketplace install:

codex plugin marketplace add a5c-ai/babysitter-codex
codex plugin add babysitter --marketplace babysitter

--marketplace babysitter is the marketplace name declared in the repo's .agents/plugins/marketplace.json (not the repo name).

Plugin README

Cursor IDE and CLI (Experimental)

Via the Cursor marketplace or the SDK helper:

babysitter harness:install-plugin cursor

Plugin README

Gemini CLI (Experimental)

babysitter harness:install-plugin gemini-cli

Plugin README

GitHub Copilot (Experimental)