Saga

A workflow orchestrator for agentic coding sessions. Saga teaches an agent to run a coherent working Session — the narrative layer that strings a body of work into a single through-line, from session start to session log.

Saga owns neither knowledge nor work. It threads the two domain-owning tools beneath it into and out of the session.

The three-tool split

Saga is one part of a three-tool ecosystem founded on the distinction knowledge vs. work:

• Norn — knowledge. A generic query/validation/repair layer that keeps the Vault consistent. Enforces the rules it is given; has no native concept of a Workspace.
• Mimir — work. An opinionated project tool that natively owns the work model (projects, initiatives, tasks, release planning).
• Saga — orchestration. Threads Norn and Mimir into and out of a Session. Owns neither.

The test each tool must pass is to state its purpose without "and": Norn keeps knowledge. Mimir holds work. Saga weaves them into a session.

Norn and Mimir are forthcoming. Saga's Phase 1 stands on its own against a markdown knowledge vault; the Norn/Mimir seams are Phase 2.

The five skills

Skill names are prefixed/descriptive so they stay unambiguous when installed standalone (the Claude Code plugin also namespaces them as saga:<name>).

Skill	What it does
start-session	Saga's entry point. Assembles the Session Primer (User Profile + Shared Memory + Workspace Brief) and routes the work.
initialize-saga	Binds a project to a vault Workspace and scaffolds or self-heals it.
grill-me	Breaks a subject down by relentless interrogation, stress-testing a plan against the workspace glossary and decisions and writing both as clarity lands.
write-session-log	At a work boundary, writes the merged Session Log memorializing what happened — decisions, deviations, and Consolidation Candidates.
consolidate-sessions	Lifts Consolidation Candidates out of frozen Session Logs into maintained context — durable knowledge to the workspace, follow-ups to tasks, user observations to the partner-model log.

Install

Saga ships as a Claude Code plugin served from this repo via a local directory marketplace (saga-dev). From a Claude Code session:

/plugin marketplace add /path/to/saga
/plugin install saga@saga-dev

Because the marketplace source is the repo directory itself, the installed plugin is served in place — ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} resolves to the repo root, so the installed skills are the repo files (no copy to keep in sync).

Once installed, a primary session starts with:

/saga:start-session

start-session is also the recovery point after a context clear/reset: it reloads the Session Primer for the same body of work before the agent continues.

Codex (and other agents)

The verified install path is the cross-harness skills CLI, which fetches from GitHub and installs into ~/.agents/skills/ — read by Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, opencode, and others:

npx skills add dbtlr/saga --skill '*'

This is confirmed working: the skills load in Codex. Codex does not read skills from the working directory, and its native plugin marketplace add flow expects plugins nested under plugins/<name>/ (Saga is a root plugin), so the skills CLI is the supported route. Codex App users can also add Saga via the Plugins UI — the repo ships marketplace.json (github self-reference) and .codex-plugin/plugin.json for that (App path not verified headlessly).

Refresh an existing global install after Saga changes with:

npx skills update start-session initialize-saga write-session-log consolidate-sessions grill-me -g -y

How it fits together

A Session is bounded by a body of work, not by a single context window. start-session builds the Session Primer that re-loads on each resumption, keeping the through-line across compactions and new windows. At a work boundary, write-session-log freezes what happened; consolidate-sessions later lifts the durable parts into maintained context. initialize-saga keeps the underlying Workspace well-formed.

Repository layout

• skills/ — the five skill sources (start-session, initialize-saga, grill-me, write-session-log, consolidate-sessions), discovered by both harnesses and the cross-harness skills CLI.
• skills/start-session/build_primer.py — resolves Project Binding → Vault Registry → vault root and merges the Active Context. Ships inside the skill so it travels in every install model (plugin or bare npx skills add).
• resources/, templates/ — shared skill resources and document templates.
• tests/ — primer-merge tests.
• .claude-plugin/ — Claude Code plugin manifest and the local saga-dev marketplace.
• .codex-plugin/ — Codex plugin declaration (plugin.json), pointing at skills/.
• marketplace.json — cross-harness marketplace manifest (github self-reference to dbtlr/saga).
• codex.json — Codex config (instructions, allowed tools).

License

MIT — see LICENSE.