Babysitter

What does this agent do, and when should you use it?

Babysitter is a workflow-orchestration project for AI coding harnesses, exposed through the babysitter, genty, and adapters CLIs plus harness plugins. Its workflows are JavaScript processes that can call ctx.task and ctx.breakpoint, with the runtime using that process to determine which next task is permitted. Tasks, gates, and decisions are recorded in an event-sourced journal, enabling replay and interrupted-run resumption. Version 6 uses the Adapters runtime to run the same process across supported coding harnesses, while an internal harness can execute processes for scripts, tests, and CI/CD without an external coding agent. The repository also includes blueprints, a process library, configurable compression, MCP server startup, and genty runtime-management commands.

A user starts a run through in-session commands such as /babysitter:call, /babysitter:yolo, and /babysitter:plan, or with genty call --harness <harness> --prompt <prompt> --workspace <path>. In a JavaScript process, await ctx.task(...) dispatches work and await ctx.breakpoint(...) creates a required human gate; normal code conditions can use quality-check results to gate subsequent work. After each step, the runtime checks what the process permits next and records tasks, gates, and decisions under ~/.a5c/runs/ by default, with compatibility reads from repository-local .a5c/runs/. The genty CLI provides resume, doctor, retrospect, cleanup, and start-server; the internal harness can execute a process or prompt directly and delegate subtasks to discovered installed harnesses. Plugins automatically register four compression layers, configurable through BABYSITTER_COMPRESSION_ENABLED, babysitter compression:toggle, and .a5c/compression.config.json.

1. An engineering lead who needs a delivery sequence such as plan, human approval, implementation, testing, and score-based refinement encoded and enforced in JavaScript.
2. A CI/CD maintainer who wants to run a lint-and-test process through genty call --harness internal where no external coding-agent CLI is available.
3. A Claude Code team that needs structured approval gates during a long-running task and wants to resume it with /babysitter:resume after interruption.
4. An engineering group using Claude Code, Codex CLI, or other supported harnesses that wants to reuse one process through Adapters.
5. A team that must audit and review automated runs using journal records together with genty doctor and genty retrospect.

How do you install or deploy this agent?

Prerequisites are Node.js 20.0.0+ (the adapters CLI requires 20.9.0+) and a supported AI coding harness. Install the main CLI:

npm install -g @a5c-ai/babysitter

To drive a harness directly from the shell, install:

npm install -g @a5c-ai/adapters-cli
adapters doctor

For runtime orchestration commands, install:

npm install -g @a5c-ai/genty-platform

For Claude Code, add the a5c-ai/babysitter marketplace and install [email protected]. For Codex CLI (Beta), run codex plugin marketplace add a5c-ai/babysitter. The supplied material does not document an additional credential-configuration step.

How do you use this agent?

In a Claude Code session, run:

/babysitter:user-install
/babysitter:project-install
/babysitter:doctor
/babysitter:call implement user authentication with TDD

A minimal runtime invocation is:
genty call --harness claude-code --prompt "implement user authentication with TDD" --workspace .

For automation without an external coding agent:

genty call --harness internal --process .a5c/processes/lint-and-test.js#process --workspace . --no-interactive --json

Resume an interrupted run with genty resume --run-id <runId> --harness claude-code --workspace .

What are this agent's strengths and limitations?

How does this agent compare with similar options?

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