Organize development work with coding agents

Zdev records development work as briefs and tasks in your repository. Its agent workflows use that record to plan changes, implement tasks, and check the results.

The brief describes what to build and why. Tasks break that objective into work that can be implemented and checked. Decisions, dependencies, and results stay with the repository, so another agent or a later session can continue without reconstructing the plan from chat history.

The CLI manages this record. The installed skill gives your coding agent workflows for exploring an objective, creating tasks, and carrying out the approved work. You can ask for one task, a loop through an area, or compatible tasks in parallel.

You can run the terminal commands in these docs yourself or ask your agent to run them and explain the result. The agent uses the same CLI to manage records; its workflows also coordinate the development work.

Start with one change

An area groups work toward an objective. Its brief records what you agreed to build and the boundaries of the change. Individual Markdown tasks describe the work and how to check it, under .zdev/ in your repository.

In your coding-agent chat, you might start with:

Use zdev to explore adding --name NAME to hello.py.
Keep the current greeting when no name is supplied.

The agent helps turn the objective into a brief and a proposed task bundle. Once you approve the work, it can implement the tasks, run the agreed checks, and have a separate agent verify each result before committing it. The record shows what is finished and what remains.

The first-task tutorial takes that example through installation, planning, approval, and a completed task.

Find your next step

The Working with zdev guide explains areas, tasks, discussion, research, and longer runs. Follow a feature from idea to commit for ordinary development, or the research walkthrough for an uncertain performance objective and a bounded sequence of experiments.

Your first task is a small worked tutorial, starting with an empty repository.
Agent commands explains what you can ask the agent to do, with examples and stopping points.
CLI reference documents terminal commands, with examples and options.
Detailed reference covers task format, branches, configuration, and harness support.
Coding guidelines explains the shared expectations for planning, implementation, and review.
Upgrade to 2.0 explains how to refresh existing integrations and what changes in review.

Where it runs

The binary supports macOS and Linux on x86-64 and Arm64. Codex, Claude Code, OpenCode, Pi, Oh My Pi, and Google Antigravity have integrations. Delegation, parallel work, and continuation support vary by harness; check the harness reference before choosing a long-running workflow. Zdev does not provide its own model service.

Project

Zdev is MIT licensed. The changelog records releases and changes.

The introductory post explains the motivation for zdev and shows an example conversation with a coding agent.