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Getting Started — Overview

processkit is consumed by agent harnesses and project tooling. You can install it manually from a release tarball, or let an installer such as aibox do the copying and harness wiring for you.

The minimal workflow is:

  1. Install a processkit release into your project's context/ tree.
  2. Pick a package tier (minimal, managed, software, research, or product).
  3. Register processkit-gateway with your MCP-capable harness.
  4. Use MCP tools for entity reads and writes instead of editing project memory by hand.

See Installing for concrete commands.

What gets installed​

A processkit release contains:

  • context/skills/ — the shipped skill catalog and per-skill MCP servers.
  • context/skills/_lib/processkit/ — shared Python runtime helpers used by the MCP servers and gateway.
  • context/schemas/ — the 16 shipped v2 project-memory schemas.
  • context/state-machines/ — implementation contracts used by entity management tools.
  • .processkit/ — package tier metadata and release metadata.
  • AGENTS.md — a provider-neutral agent entry point.

Your project then owns its local memory under directories such as context/workitems/, context/decisions/, context/artifacts/, context/notes/, and context/logs/.

Managed install path​

Managed installers can add devcontainer lifecycle, harness config, and upgrade handling. aibox is the reference managed integration today: it can fetch a pinned processkit release, choose a package tier, write MCP config for the selected harness, and optionally supervise the gateway daemon.

That is convenience infrastructure. The same installed processkit files can also be used directly by Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Hermes, Aider integrations, or a custom MCP client when those tools are configured manually.

Requirements​

  • Python 3.10 or newer.
  • uv, used to run the Python MCP server scripts and resolve their inline PEP 723 dependencies.
  • An MCP-capable harness if you want tool access. You can still read the skills and schemas directly without MCP.
  • Docker or OrbStack only if your chosen environment manager uses a devcontainer.

Learning path​

  1. Read Primitives → Overview to understand the durable entity model.
  2. Read Primitives → Format to learn the entity file shape.
  3. Read Skills → Overview to learn what skills do.
  4. Pick a package (Packages → Overview).
  5. Create your first entity.