textus

Durable, multi-writer context for codebases that humans and AI agents both touch. Your agent forgets everything between sessions; your runbooks and CLAUDE.md get edited by whoever ran last; nobody can reconstruct who wrote what. textus is the memory that survives the model, the session, and the vendor — a shared workspace where humans, agents, and runners write into separate lanes, propose changes through a review queue, and leave an audit trail behind every byte.

textus is Latin for "the fabric a text is woven from" — same root as context, from con-texere, "to weave together." The protocol weaves human edits, agent proposals, and runner intake into one durable fabric. The shape of that fabric is yours; the rules for writing into it are textus's.

The idea

Three actors write to your repo today:

Humans — you, your team. Authoritative on identity, decisions, voice.
Agents — Claude, Cursor, custom assistants. Smart, fast, forgetful, and not always right.
Runners — cron jobs, fetchers, CI. Bring outside data in.

Without coordination, they overwrite each other and nothing remembers why. textus gives each actor a lane (a zone), routes everything they can't write directly through a review queue, and writes every successful change to an append-only audit log. The lanes are enforced at the protocol level, not by convention.

identity/   human only          — who you are, what you decide, how you sound
working/    human + agent + runner — day-to-day catalog
intake/     runner only         — declared external inputs
review/     agent + human       — proposals waiting on a human accept
output/     builder only        — computed, published artifacts

An agent that tries to write directly into working/ or identity/ gets write_forbidden. It writes to review/ instead. You accept the good proposals; textus promotes them, records the move, and audits both halves. Stable per-entry uid: means a reorganization doesn't break references. A monotonic audit cursor (textus pulse --since=N) means the next session — possibly a different agent, possibly a different model — picks up exactly where the last one left off.

That's the load-bearing claim: coordination is a protocol invariant, not a library convenience.

See it in four commands

gem install textus
textus init                          # creates .textus/ with zones + schemas
# agent proposes a change to review/
echo '{"_meta":{"name":"oncall","proposal":{"target_key":"working.notes.oncall","action":"put"}},"body":"Patrick on call.\n"}' \
  | textus put review.notes.oncall --as=agent --stdin
# you accept it — textus promotes to working/ and audits the move
textus accept review.notes.oncall --as=human

Try the gate the other way (textus put working.notes.X --as=agent) and you get write_forbidden, with the role that would be allowed named in the error. That refusal is the whole point.

Try it

5-command worked demo — single terminal scroll, no MCP, no schemas: examples/hello/
Wire textus into Claude Code via MCP — 4 steps, ~5 minutes: INTEGRATE_WITH_CLAUDE.md
Use textus as your own project's context store: examples/project/
Use textus to author a Claude plugin (textus is the source-of-truth, build publishes to agents/, skills/, commands/): examples/claude-plugin/

Protocol, not just a gem

This Ruby gem is the reference implementation of textus/3 — a wire format and storage convention any language can speak. The protocol owns the envelope shape, the role/zone gate, the audit log format, and the key grammar. The gem version (semver, see badge) and the protocol version (textus/3) move independently; envelopes carry the protocol field so consumers can pin to the contract, not the implementation.

Specification: SPEC.md
Architecture: ARCHITECTURE.md
Per-release notes: CHANGELOG.md

A second implementation in another language would share the same .textus/ directory and the same audit log. That's deliberate.

Install

gem install textus

Or from this repo:

bundle install
bundle exec exe/textus --help

Quick start

textus init

You get .textus/ with all five zone directories, baseline schemas, an empty audit log, and a starter manifest:

.textus/
  manifest.yaml       # zone declarations + key-to-path mapping
  audit.log           # append-only NDJSON, every write
  schemas/            # YAML field shapes per entry family
  templates/          # mustache templates for derived entries
  hooks/              # one .rb per hook
  sentinels/          # publish bookkeeping
  zones/
    identity/         # human-only — identity, voice, decisions
    working/          # human / agent / runner — day-to-day catalog
    intake/           # runner — declared external inputs (actions)
    review/           # agent + human — proposals awaiting accept
    output/           # builder only — computed outputs

Manifest path: fields are relative to .textus/zones/. So working.network.org.jane lives at .textus/zones/working/network/org/jane.md.

Read and write:

textus get working.network.org.jane
textus list --zone=working
echo '{"_meta":{"name":"bob","org":"acme"},"body":"hi\n"}' \
  | textus put working.network.org.bob --as=human --stdin
textus freshness --zone=output       # per-entry fresh/stale/never_refreshed/no_policy
textus rule list                     # show every rule block
textus audit --limit=20              # query the audit log

(All verbs return JSON envelopes by default; pass --output=json explicitly if you prefer.)

For the full shape — Claude plugin with agents, skills, commands, pending walkthrough, intake action — see examples/claude-plugin/.

What's shipped

Per-entry formats. format: markdown | json | yaml | text on a manifest entry. cat .textus/zones/output/marketplace.json | jq . works without going through textus — the in-store file is the consumer-shaped artifact. Structured outputs carry _meta at the top level (generated_at, from, template, transform).
Per-leaf publishing. Nested entries declare publish_each: "skills/{basename}/SKILL.md". Every leaf byte-copies to its consumer location on textus build. No more hand-mirrored agents/ / skills/ / commands/ directories.
Build and publish in one pass. Textus::Write::Publish materializes generator-zone entries and copies nested leaves to their publish_each targets. The textus build CLI verb dispatches to it; the wire envelope is unchanged.
Typed envelopes. Textus::Envelope is a Data.define value object with typed accessors (.meta, .body, .etag, .uid, .freshness, …). Ruby API callers get IDE help and NoMethodError on typos. The CLI JSON wire format is preserved byte-for-byte via envelope.to_h_for_wire.
Stable identity (uid:). 16-char hex, auto-minted on first put, preserved across writes and moves. textus key mv old.key new.key renames in place — uid survives, audit row records from_key, to_key, uid. Reorganising a tree no longer breaks references.
Strict key grammar. /^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9-]*$/, max 8 segments × 64 chars. textus key normalize --dry-run|--write rewrites existing stores with illegal segments deterministically.
textus boot. One-shot store orientation: zones with writers + purposes, entry families with schemas and publish targets, loaded hooks, write flows per role, the full CLI verb table, and an agent_quickstart block (read/write verbs, writable zones, propose zone, latest audit seq).
textus pulse [--since=N]. Per-turn heartbeat for agents: changed entries since cursor N, stale keys, pending review proposals, and a doctor summary. Cursor is a monotonic seq stamped on every audit row; rotation keeps the last 5 files (configurable via audit: in the manifest) and raises CursorExpired when the requested cursor has fallen off disk.
textus doctor. Health check across 9 categories: missing schemas/templates, broken hooks, illegal nested keys, sentinel drift, audit log readability, unowned schema fields, schema violations, and missing manifest files. Returns ok: true only when nothing is wrong; warnings and info don't flip the bit.
Actionable hints on every error. UnknownKey carries ranked "did you mean" suggestions. WriteForbidden names the role that would be allowed. BadFrontmatter tells you exactly what to rename. Printed to stderr alongside the JSON envelope on stdout.
Compute. Derived entries declare compute: { kind: projection, ... } (declarative rows + template) or compute: { kind: external, ... } (build runner produces the file; textus tracks sources for staleness). Inside projection computes, transform: names the row-shaping hook.

Symlink-mode publish was removed; publish is FileUtils.cp + sentinel. Sentinels for published files live under .textus/sentinels/<target_rel>.textus-managed.json so consumer directories stay clean. Legacy sibling sentinels auto-migrate on next publish.

CLI and zones

All verbs accept --output=json and return the envelope defined in SPEC §8. Write verbs require --as=<role> (role resolution: --as → TEXTUS_ROLE env → .textus/role file → default human). Recognized roles: human, agent, runner, builder.

Full verb table — read, write, health, scaffolding — is in SPEC §9.
Zone semantics and the role/write_policy mapping live in SPEC §5, with a tutorial expansion in docs/zones.md.

textus boot prints the same information for the current store: zones, entry families with schemas, registered hooks, write flows, and the verb catalog. Run it inside a store and you get the live picture; reach for the SPEC when you want the contract.

Compute and publish

Derived entries declare compute: { kind: projection, select: ..., pluck: ..., sort_by: ..., limit: ..., transform: name } and either a template under .textus/templates/ (markdown/text) or a templateless path that lets a transform hook shape the output directly (json/yaml). Projections cap at 1000 rows; the vendored Mustache subset caps at depth 8. No partials, no lambdas, no HTML escaping.

For externally-generated entries, declare compute: { kind: external, sources: [...] } — textus tracks the declared sources for staleness; the build runner produces the file.

publish_to: [path] byte-copies a single derived file to one target. publish_each: "template/{basename}.md" on a nested entry byte-copies every leaf to its templated target — substitutes {leaf}, {basename}, {key}, {ext}. Sentinels for every published file live under .textus/sentinels/. See SPEC §5.2, §5.3, §5.12.

Extension points

textus exposes a hook DSL. Drop .rb files into .textus/hooks/ (subdirectories are fine; files load alphabetically by full path). Events:

:resolve_intake — bring bytes in from elsewhere (returns {_meta:, body:})
:transform_rows — transform rows during projection (returns rows)
:validate — custom doctor check (returns issues)
:entry_put, :entry_deleted, :entry_refreshed, :build_completed, :proposal_accepted, :file_published, :entry_renamed, :proposal_rejected, :store_loaded — react to lifecycle events
:refresh_started, :refresh_failed, :refresh_backgrounded — background-refresh lifecycle

# Inside .textus/hooks/local_file.rb
Textus.hook do |reg|
  reg.on(:resolve_intake, :local_file) do |config:, args:, **|
    path = config["path"] or raise "local-file requires intake.config.path"
    {
      _meta: { "last_refreshed_at" => Time.now.utc.iso8601, "source_path" => path },
      body: File.read(File.expand_path(path)),
    }
  end
end

Textus.hook do |reg|
  reg.on(:transform_rows, :rank_by_recency) do |rows:, **|
    rows.sort_by { |r| r["updated_at"].to_s }.reverse
  end
end

To keep a batch of stale intake entries current in one shot:

textus refresh stale --prefix=working --zone=intake --as=runner
# or just refresh everything stale in the intake zone:
textus refresh stale --zone=intake --as=runner

See SPEC.md §5.10 for the full hook contract.

Schemas (.textus/schemas/<name>.yaml) declare field shapes, per-field maintained_by: ownership, and an evolution: block (added_in, deprecated_at, migrate_from). Full contract in SPEC §5.8.

See docs/agent-integration.md for the agent boot → pulse loop.

Examples

examples/claude-plugin/ — a Claude Code plugin (voice-tools) whose entire content surface — agents, skills, commands, CLAUDE.md, plugin.json, marketplace.json — is textus-managed. Demonstrates per-entry formats, publish_each, intake actions, in-process transforms and hooks, the agent-propose / human-accept loop, and the inject_boot: flag that puts an orientation preamble at the top of CLAUDE.md.

Tests

bundle exec rspec

~880 examples; includes conformance fixtures A–I from SPEC §12.

Code quality

bundle exec rubocop      # lint
bundle exec rubocop -A   # lint + autocorrect

Lefthook hooks (brew bundle install then lefthook install) run rubocop on pre-commit and rspec + rubocop on pre-push. Bypass with LEFTHOOK=0 git commit ... when needed. CI runs rspec (Ruby 3.3 / 3.4) and rubocop via GitHub Actions.

License

MIT.