Rolebox

rolebox

An agent-harness plugin — for opencode, pi, dsh, and Codex — with persistent memory, multi-agent dispatch, LSP integration, and engineering-team workflows.

The Emperor orchestrator plans, dispatches to specialists, and validates the result — no code written by the orchestrator itself.

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What it is / why you'd want it

A general coding agent is one agent with one prompt. rolebox turns it into your configured team: specialist roles you define in YAML, each with its own prompts, model, skills, and permissions, working the same task together. What they learn survives the session — decisions, conventions, and lessons persist in memory — and a graph execution engine actually runs the team: dispatching each role, carrying results and signals between them, enforcing budgets, loop caps, and approval gates.

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The pitch, concretely

• It remembers your project. Decisions, conventions, and lessons persist in memory and auto-inject at session start (<available_memory>) — you stop re-explaining yourself.
• Your team, defined by you. Every specialist is a YAML role with its own prompt, model, skills, and permissions — install one from the registry or write your own.
• Real concurrency with a ceiling. Parallel multi-agent dispatch with engine-managed concurrency, per-node budgets, and retries — the team scales without runaway spend.
• Autonomy you can gate. Workflows run as an explicit graph with bounded loops, and a node flagged needs_approval: true pauses the graph until you approve it.
• Edits that never drift. 30+ language-server tools (go-to-definition, diagnostics, references, rename) plus content-hash-anchored editing that survives concurrent file changes.

The graph engine is how the team runs: graph_create → graph_add_node / graph_add_edge → graph_run builds an explicit workflow, and graph_status reads results back. graph_run is non-blocking — you end your turn and the engine wakes you with [GRAPH COMPLETE], or [GRAPH BLOCKED] at an approval gate. Architecture and the full toolset: docs/graph-engine-architecture.md.

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Supported harnesses

Harness	Config directory	Roles directory	Global skills	Env override
opencode	~/.config/opencode	~/.config/opencode/rolebox	~/.config/opencode/skills	XDG_CONFIG_HOME
pi	~/.pi/agent	~/.pi/agent/rolebox	~/.pi/agent/skills	PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR
dsh	~/.dsh	~/.dsh/rolebox	~/.dsh/skills	DSH_HOME
Codex	~/.codex	~/.codex/rolebox	~/.codex/skills	CODEX_HOME

On every harness a rolebox/ directory in the current working directory takes precedence over the global roles directory; registry roles install with rolebox install <name> and deploy with rolebox sync <opencode|pi|dsh|codex>. Jump to setup: opencode · pi · dsh · codex

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60-second install

opencode

cd ~/.config/opencode && npm install rolebox
mkdir -p ~/.config/opencode/rolebox && cd ~/.config/opencode/rolebox && rolebox init my-agent -y

// ~/.config/opencode/opencode.jsonc
{ "plugin": ["rolebox"] }

pi

pi install npm:rolebox     # project-local instead: pi install -l npm:rolebox
mkdir -p ~/.pi/agent/rolebox && cd ~/.pi/agent/rolebox && rolebox init my-agent -y
# from a checkout instead: add "extensions": ["/path/to/rolebox/dist/entries/pi.js"] to ~/.pi/agent/settings.json

dsh

dsh plugin --profile <name> add rolebox    # installs the bundle into that profile
mkdir -p ~/.dsh/rolebox && cd ~/.dsh/rolebox && rolebox init my-agent -y   # $DSH_HOME/rolebox if set

Restart the harness. A non-bundle dsh install instead needs one - insert: row naming the profile-relative ./node_modules/rolebox/dist/entries/dsh.js in the profile's cordis.patch.yml — see examples/dsh/cordis.patch.yml. Profile patch semantics, the web role-switch dock, and the /rolebox REST surface are documented in docs/dsh-plugin-contract.md.

codex

npm install -g rolebox     # or run from a checkout built with `bun run build`
rolebox sync codex

rolebox sync codex writes the local plugin bundle under $CODEX_HOME/rolebox-marketplace (~/.codex/rolebox-marketplace by default), registers it in the Codex config.toml, and deploys installed roles to $CODEX_HOME/rolebox. The bundle starts the rolebox MCP server (rolebox mcp), which exposes rolebox's canonical tools over stdio. Restart Codex afterwards. Details: docs/codex.md.

Deprecated entry paths. The former dist/index.js, dist/pi-extension.js, and dist/dsh-plugin.js artifacts still resolve as generated re-export aliases, but they are deprecated — new checkouts and profile rows should use the canonical dist/entries/*.js paths instead.

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Comparison: opencode vs + rolebox

Capability	Raw opencode	+ rolebox
Persistent memory	❌ Sessions start blank	✅ SQLite + FTS5, auto-inject past decisions
Multi-agent teams	❌ Single agent	✅ YAML-defined specialists, parallel dispatch
LSP integration	❌ No language server access	✅ 30+ tools (go-to-def, references, rename, diagnostics…)
Hashline editing	❌ Line-number based	✅ Content-hash anchored — edits never drift
Background dispatch	❌ Sequential	✅ Real concurrency with budget tracking
Hot-reload assets	❌ Restart required	✅ Edit YAML, reload instantly

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See it work

Loop mode runs the same task across N fresh sessions: |loop:N| executes real multi-round iterations, each round dispatching the task to a fresh worker session and reporting its own outcome — useful for refinement passes, batch fixes, and self-correcting workflows.

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Role gallery

Role	What it does
emperor	Top-level orchestrator — plans, delegates, validates complex work across a specialist team
software-architect	System design, trade-off analysis, ADRs, C4 models, and architecture reviews
react-frontend	React/Next.js component design, state management, and frontend architecture
ai-designer	AI application design with humane UX gates, interaction modeling, and design system creation
tauri	Desktop app development with Tauri v2 — IPC, plugins, window management, system tray
dart-flutter	Cross-platform mobile and desktop Flutter development with full gate review pipeline

Install any role from the oh-my-role registry with rolebox install <name> and restart your harness.

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CLI reference

Command	Description
rolebox init <name>	Scaffold a new role directory
rolebox install [name]	Install a role from the registry (picker when omitted)
rolebox status	List installed roles and their status
rolebox info [name]	Inspect one role in detail (picker when omitted)
rolebox sync <target>	Deploy installed roles to opencode / pi / dsh / codex
rolebox mcp	Run the rolebox MCP server on stdio (Codex integration)
rolebox config [name]	Configure a role's models (--target selects the harness)
rolebox monitor	Runtime dashboard (TUI): loops, graph workflows, dispatch
rolebox memory search <query>	Full-text search across persistent memory
rolebox --version	Show version

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Model Alias Configuration

Registry roles often ship placeholder model names; map them once in role_config.yaml — ~/.config/opencode/role_config.yaml, ~/.pi/agent/role_config.yaml, ~/.dsh/role_config.yaml, or ~/.codex/role_config.yaml (the harness config directory). Unrecognized values pass through unchanged with a warning. Full resolution chain, error handling, and hot-reload: docs/model-aliases.md.

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Upgrading from 0.x.x? rolebox 1.x replaced the 0.x execution model. Workflows are now built and run imperatively on a graph execution engine — graph_create → graph_add_node / graph_add_edge → graph_run — instead of being declared in role.yaml. See docs/graph-engine-architecture.md.

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Docs index

Topic	Docs	Topic	Docs	Topic	Docs
Create a Role	create-a-role.md	role.yaml Reference	role-yaml.md	Directory Structure	directory-structure.md
Functions	functions.md	Copilot (Turn-End)	copilot.md	Skills	skills.md
References	references.md	Subagents	subagents.md	Graph Engine	graph-engine-architecture.md
Memory Strategy	memory-strategy.md	Model Aliases	model-aliases.md	CLI	cli.md
Session Tools	session-tools-strategy.md	Dispatch Config	dispatch-config.md	Custom Hooks	hooks.md
Extensions	extensions.md	Registry	registry.md	Error Handling	error-handling.md
Limitations	limitations.md	Compatibility	compatibility.md	dsh Plugin Contract	dsh-plugin-contract.md
dsh Provider Notes	dsh-provider-notes.md	Install/Update Audit	audit-install-update-platform.md	CLI Output Audit	audit-progress-ui.md
Codex	codex.md	Compatibility	compatibility.md	Limitations	limitations.md

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Contributing

Contributions welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md.

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License

MIT — see the LICENSE file.