Gas Town

Status: Experimental (v0.1) - We're exploring these ideas and invite you to explore with us.

Gas Town is an experiment in multi-agent coordination for Claude Code. It provides infrastructure for spawning workers, tracking work via molecules, and coordinating merges.

We think of it using steam-age metaphors:

Claude       = Fire (the energy source)
Claude Code  = Steam Engine (harnesses the fire)
Gas Town     = Steam Train (coordinates engines on tracks)
Beads        = Railroad Tracks (the persistent ledger)

The goal is a "village" architecture - not rigid hierarchy, but distributed awareness where agents can help neighbors when something is stuck. Whether this actually works at scale is something we're still discovering.

Prerequisites

• Go 1.23+ - For building from source
• Git - For rig management and beads sync
• tmux - Required for agent sessions (all workers run in tmux panes)
• Claude Code CLI - Required for agents (claude command must be available)

Install

From source (recommended for now):

go install github.com/steveyegge/gastown/cmd/gt@latest

Package managers (coming soon):

# Homebrew (macOS/Linux)
brew install gastown

# npm (cross-platform)
npm install -g @anthropic/gastown

Quick Start

# Create a town (workspace)
gt install ~/gt

# Add a project rig
gt rig add myproject --remote=https://github.com/you/myproject.git

# Spawn a worker on an issue
gt spawn --issue myproject-123

Architecture

Town (~/gt/)
├── Mayor (global coordinator)
└── Rig: myproject
    ├── Witness (lifecycle manager)
    ├── Refinery (merge queue)
    └── Polecats (workers)

Key Concepts

Ideas we're exploring:

• Molecular Chemistry of Work: Protos (templates) → Mols (flowing work) → Wisps (ephemeral) → Digests (outcomes)
• Beads: Git-backed, human-readable ledger for tracking work (github.com/steveyegge/beads)
• Village Model: Distributed awareness instead of centralized monitoring
• Propulsion Principle: Agents pull work from molecules rather than waiting for commands
• Nondeterministic Idempotence: The idea that any worker can continue any molecule after crashes

Some of these are implemented; others are still aspirational. See docs for current status.

Commands

gt status             # Town status
gt rig list           # List rigs
gt spawn --issue <id> # Start worker
gt mail inbox         # Check messages
gt peek <worker>      # Check worker health
gt nudge <worker>     # Wake stuck worker

Documentation

• Vision - Core innovations and philosophy
• Architecture - System design
• Molecular Chemistry - Work composition
• Molecules - Workflow templates

Development

go build -o gt ./cmd/gt
go test ./...

License

MIT