Hamster

Hamster

Install Hamster. One plugin. Talk through hosted MCP or the CLI. Keep the plan on disk, then ship from it.

This is the Hamster product: Agent Plugins skills on every supported client, hosted MCP on every client that supports MCP and installs from GitHub or a marketplace, plus generated native execution workers on Claude Code, GitHub Copilot CLI, and Grok Build. The CLI is how the plan stays in this repo. It is not a second install.

Install

Installation differs by client. If you use more than one, install Hamster separately for each one.

Cursor

1. Customize → Add Marketplace → Import from GitHub.
2. Paste https://github.com/gethamster/plugin at User scope and select Import.
3. Open the Personal tab and select Add next to Hamster.

On Enterprise, an admin must allow marketplace imports. Once Hamster is on the Cursor marketplace, /add-plugin hamster works too:

/add-plugin hamster

Grok Bot is not a separate Hamster package. It uses the same Cursor account and plugin library, so the Cursor install above is the Grok Bot install. Do not run /add-plugin in the Grok Bot chat. If Grok Bot shows "Complete GitHub auth to sync installed plugins", complete GitHub auth when Grok Bot asks.

Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add gethamster/plugin
/plugin install hamster@hamster-plugins

Codex CLI

codex plugin marketplace add gethamster/plugin
codex plugin add hamster@hamster-plugins

You can also launch codex, run /plugins, and install hamster@hamster-plugins.

Codex Plugins Directory

The Hamster listing in OpenAI's Plugins Directory, used by Codex and ChatGPT, is a zip of this same plugin produced by node scripts/build-codex-bundle.mjs: the Codex manifest, the hosted MCP connector in .mcp.json, the skills, and the listing images. CI builds it on every push and uploads it as a workflow artifact, and the artifact download is the zip to upload to the directory.

One section differs. The zip replaces the "Install the CLI" section of skills/setup/SKILL.md with codex-directory/install-cli.md: when the CLI is missing, setup asks you to install it yourself from CLI binary instead of running the installer, then signs you in and syncs as usual.

Hamster connects to your workspace through the hosted MCP server. Coding skills require access to your repository and a shell.

Antigravity

From a clone of this repository:

agy plugin install ./plugins/hamster

Or from GitHub:

agy plugin install https://github.com/gethamster/plugin/plugins/hamster

Both install plugins/hamster, the folder every other client installs. The bare repository URL also works, but agy then imports the root as a Gemini CLI extension and drops the agents' model settings; running the command above replaces that install in place.

If Hamster 3.2 is already installed, uninstall it before you install 3.4. An in-place Antigravity install retains the four skill directories renamed in 3.4.

agy plugin uninstall hamster
agy plugin install https://github.com/gethamster/plugin/plugins/hamster

In the Antigravity app (2.15 or newer), authenticate hamster_hamster under Settings → Customizations → Installed MCP Servers. The plugin registers that server itself, so a manual hamster entry in mcp_config.json would add a second copy of every tool.

Using GitHub Copilot CLI, Gemini CLI, Grok Build, or Pi? See More install options.

More install options

GitHub Copilot CLI

copilot plugin marketplace add gethamster/plugin
copilot plugin install hamster@hamster-plugins

To sign in to the hosted MCP server, run /mcp auth hamster.

Gemini CLI

gemini extensions install https://github.com/gethamster/plugin

To sign in to the hosted MCP server, run /mcp auth hamster.

Grok Build

grok plugin install gethamster/plugin --trust

To sign in to the hosted MCP server, open /mcps, select hamster, and press i.

Pi

pi install npm:@tryhamster/pi

To track the repository instead of npm releases, run pi install git:github.com/gethamster/plugin.

The Pi package installs the skills only. To connect the hosted MCP server, add it and sign in:

pi mcp add hamster --url https://tryhamster.com/mcp
pi mcp login hamster

After install

1. Talk — hosted MCP at https://tryhamster.com/mcp, or hamster chat when MCP tools are unavailable and the CLI is signed in. Your client owns the Hamster sign-in.
2. Plan on disk — say Install Hamster, or run ship. The setup skill installs the CLI if needed, runs hamster auth login, and syncs the plan.
3. Ship — execute the brief already on disk. Nothing runs automatically on session start.

Skills

Claude Code and Copilot CLI list these as /hamster:<skill>. Cursor and Grok Build list them as /<skill>, and Pi as /skill:<skill>. The table uses the Claude form.

Four skills carry a -hamster suffix because Cursor invokes plugin skills as a bare /skill-name, and ask, plan, and resume are Cursor's own concepts — cursor-agent --mode takes plan and ask, --resume selects a session — so short names compete with them there. review is renamed with that family so Cursor's command list stays one convention. Claude Code namespaces plugin skills as /<plugin>:<skill> and they cannot conflict, so on Claude the suffix is redundant and you type /hamster:ask-hamster. One skills tree serves every client, so that is the cost of being unambiguous on Cursor. ship, qa, retro, and setup shadow nothing and stay short.

/hamster:setup

The readiness path. Noninteractive check first (ensure-ready). If the CLI is installed and you are signed in, it runs hamster sync to refresh the plan. Otherwise it installs the CLI, opens login, and inits/syncs — only when you asked.

/hamster:ask-hamster

The gateway for open-ended questions that need Hamster's judgment across the workspace, such as how the code you're changing relates to priorities, blueprints, or decisions. Asks through the ask_hamster MCP tool when the client has it; otherwise hamster chat is the same ask path over the CLI. Direct reads and writes go to the named Hamster MCP tools instead. For example:

/hamster:ask-hamster I'm modifying auth middleware in apps/web/app/api/. What does our blueprint say about third-party integrations?
/hamster:ask-hamster I prototyped rate limiting in apps/api/middleware/rate-limit.ts. Which brief or initiative should this work belong to?

Follow-up questions continue the same Hamster conversation when they depend on the previous response.

/hamster:ship

The main orchestrator. Ship, plan-hamster, and resume-hamster share brief selection: a slug, UUID, or Hamster Studio URL takes precedence, followed by an exact title or short title (the part before a subtitle separator). Names ignore case, a leading “the”, a trailing “brief”, and trailing punctuation. A unique match proceeds without a selection question; ambiguous or partial-only names require clarification.

/hamster:ship user-authentication
/hamster:ship the Checkout reliability brief.
/hamster:ship https://tryhamster.com/home/hamster/briefs/2de8d546-50ab-4dbd-a678-579ec8119f60

If no argument is given, presents an interactive picker of actionable briefs.

Flow: Readiness (setup/ensure-ready) → Setup (prereqs + live sync) → Brief selection → Inline wave scheduling (one confirmation) → Branch + merge base → Parallel wave execution (implement → validate + test → wave review → bisectable commits) → Final validation → Ask about PR creation

No plan generation or task elaboration occurs at any step — scheduling only organizes the pre-generated tasks into parallel waves.

/hamster:plan-hamster

Read-only analysis with optional deep review. Produces the execution plan without making changes.

/hamster:plan-hamster api-rate-limiting

After analysis, choose a review mode:

• CEO Review (Founder Mode) — 10-section deep dive from first principles
• Eng Review (Architecture Mode) — 4-section technical review with ASCII diagrams and test plan
• Quick Analysis — Just the plan

/hamster:resume-hamster

Resumes an interrupted execution. Auto-detects the brief from the git branch name (feature/{key}-{id}-{slug}), in-progress tasks, or a provided argument.

/hamster:resume-hamster
/hamster:resume-hamster user-authentication

/hamster:review-hamster

Paranoid two-pass code review for the current feature branch:

• Pass 1 (CRITICAL): SQL safety, race conditions, auth boundaries, enum completeness, secrets
• Pass 2 (INFORMATIONAL): Side effects, magic numbers, dead code, test gaps, type coercion, time safety
• Interactive resolution for critical findings with fix/acknowledge/false-positive options

/hamster:review-hamster

/hamster:qa

Systematic testing with 4 modes:

/hamster:qa diff        # Test only what changed (default on feature branches)
/hamster:qa full        # Full test suite with coverage
/hamster:qa quick       # 30-second lint + typecheck + smoke tests
/hamster:qa regression  # Changed files + dependents, flag new failures

Includes issue taxonomy (functional/type-safety/integration/performance/coverage-gap) and optional fix loop.

/hamster:retro

Engineering retrospective from git history:

/hamster:retro          # Last 7 days (default)
/hamster:retro 14       # Last 14 days
/hamster:retro 30       # Last 30 days
/hamster:retro 24h      # Last 24 hours

Produces: metrics table, hourly distribution, session analysis, hotspots, PR sizes, per-contributor deep dive with praise and growth suggestions, trends vs last retro, and a narrative summary.

Execution workers

Canonical worker protocols live in plugins/hamster/skills/ship/references/agents/. plugins/hamster/agents/task-executor.md and plugins/hamster/agents/wave-reviewer.md are generated native adapters (registration + model metadata) over those bodies, and every client with native agents registers them from that one folder, except Gemini CLI (and Antigravity given the bare repository URL), which registers the generated root agents/ copy without model metadata — run node scripts/sync-adapters.mjs after editing the canonical files; CI checks drift. Ship prefers the registered native agent when the client exposes it (Claude Code, Copilot CLI, and Grok Build do), otherwise launches a generic subagent and injects the matching canonical body, otherwise runs the same protocol inline. On the generic path, prefer the strongest available coding model for task-executor and a mid-tier model for wave-reviewer when the client can pin one; otherwise inherit. Wave scheduling, branch creation, commits, and PR creation stay inline.

Executors implement unambiguous brief/spec authority over contradictory tasks and record resolved plan issues; only unresolved or unbuilt work blocks completion, and resumed PR updates retain earlier task and plan-feedback resolutions.

Every skill directory is self-contained: no SKILL.md reads a sibling skill's files, because clients are free to install or load one skill on its own. Each skill is SKILL.md plus optional scripts/ and references/; longer procedures live in references/ so the skill body stays within client size limits (Codex reads the first 8,000 bytes). Shared material — readiness scripts under each skill's scripts/, and protocols under references/ that plan-hamster and resume-hamster re-enter — is duplicated into every skill that needs it, and scripts/validate-plugin.mjs hashes every copy and fails the build if they drift apart. Root scripts/ is maintainer tooling (sync-adapters.mjs, validate-plugin.mjs, build-codex-bundle.mjs); it is not part of the installed plugin.

plugins/hamster/ is the plugin: every client installs this one folder, except Gemini CLI, which installs the generated copy at the root described below. It is the folder submitted to the Claude plugin directory, which scans only the folder it is given. It holds each client's manifest (.claude-plugin/, .codex-plugin/, .cursor-plugin/, and the plugin.json Antigravity reads), .mcp.json and the mcp_config.json Antigravity reads, skills/, agents/, and its own README.md, which lists what the plugin runs, sends, and fetches, so update it when that changes. The repository root keeps the marketplace catalogs that point at ./plugins/hamster (.claude-plugin/, which Copilot CLI also reads, .cursor-plugin/, and .agents/plugins/), the root package.json whose pi.skills points Pi at the same skills, the generated Gemini extension, and maintainer tooling, CI, and listing images. validate-plugin.mjs fails if any other plugin manifest or MCP config appears at the root, because Antigravity installs the root when given the bare repository URL and would pick it up, and it fails on any symbolic link or image inside plugins/hamster/ except .claude-plugin/icon.svg, the Claude plugin directory's listing icon, which must stay a self-contained SVG with no raster, script, or external reference, and the three Codex listing PNGs in assets/, which must match the root assets/ copies byte for byte. build-codex-bundle.mjs packs the root assets/ into the OpenAI Plugins Directory zip. The Cursor logo is a URL to the root assets/logo.svg. That plugin.json must not declare the Agent Plugins $schema: with it, Copilot CLI reads agents only from com.github.copilot/agents/ and registers neither worker.

Besides the generated gemini-extension.json, the one plugin manifest at the root is .grok-plugin/plugin.json. Grok Build's plugin install <repo> reads a manifest at the repository root and doesn't follow a marketplace catalog, so this file points its skills, agents, and mcpServers into plugins/hamster/. It keeps grok plugin install gethamster/plugin --trust working and lets existing Grok installs update onto this layout. agents must stay a directory path: Grok loads no agents from an array of files. sync-adapters.mjs writes its name, version, and description from plugins/hamster/plugin.json, and validate-plugin.mjs checks that each path resolves and that no other <client>-plugin/plugin.json appears at the root. Antigravity and Pi don't read .grok-plugin/, and the Claude plugin directory scans only plugins/hamster/.

Don't edit the root skills/, agents/, or gemini-extension.json. They are the Gemini CLI extension, and sync-adapters.mjs generates them from plugins/hamster/: skills/ is an exact copy, agents/ leaves out the color line Gemini rejects and the model line Gemini would read as a Gemini model name, and gemini-extension.json takes its name, version, and description from plugins/hamster/plugin.json and the hosted MCP URL from plugins/hamster/.mcp.json. The Gemini CLI extensions gallery lists repositories with that manifest at the root, and Gemini loads skills and agents only from beside it. Given the bare repository URL, Antigravity installs the same root and gets the same 8 skills, 2 agents, and MCP server. Edit plugins/hamster/, run node scripts/sync-adapters.mjs, and commit both; --check and the validator fail when the root copies drift.

The root package.json is the Pi package. Pi installs a git repository from its root, so its pi.skills points Pi into plugins/hamster/skills, and the same file is the public npm package @tryhamster/pi. It carries the pi-package keyword, which is how Pi's package catalog finds npm packages, and its files ships only the skills; npm adds this README, LICENSE, and package.json. sync-adapters.mjs writes it from plugins/hamster/plugin.json, so a plugin bump is a new npm version, and validate-plugin.mjs fails if it drifts, turns private, loses the keyword, or stops shipping the skills. To publish a release, run npm pack --dry-run to check the file list, then npm publish --access public from the repository root.

Editing shared material is a multi-file edit. The first path in each group below is the source of truth; the rest are copies that must stay byte-identical. Change the source, copy it over the others, then run the validator — it names the exact cp commands when a group has drifted.

Execution loop

For each wave of independent parent tasks (executed in parallel):

Wave N (parallel):
  [task-executor A] || [task-executor B] || [task-executor C]

Post-wave (orchestrator):
  Validation + test gate (one pass, stop on test failure)
  [wave-reviewer] — one worker for the whole wave
    (small low-risk waves: orchestrator reviews inline, no worker)
  Bisectable commits per parent (direct bash)

Git conventions

• Branch: feature/{key}-{lowest-id}-{brief-slug}, where {key} is the task display ID's key, lowercased (HAM-42 → feature/ham-42-…, ACME-7 → feature/acme-7-…)
• Parent task commits: feat({key}-123): concise description (split by concern for bisectability)
• Simplification commits: refactor({key}-123): simplify description
• Review fix commits: fix({key}-123): address review findings
• QA fix commits: fix(qa): test-file — description
• PR: Created on request (not auto-created), targets detected default branch

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Advanced: CLI binary

Use this when you want the hamster binary without a plugin client. If setup from the Plugins Directory sent you here, run only the install line (or download a binary below and put it on your PATH), then go back to setup; it signs you in and syncs.

curl -fsSL https://tryhamster.com/cli/install | bash
hamster auth login
hamster init
hamster sync

Or download a binary from the latest release.

Supported platforms: macOS (amd64, arm64), Linux (amd64, arm64), Windows (amd64).

The plugin package and source files in this repository are licensed under MIT. Prebuilt hamster binaries distributed through GitHub Releases are provided under Hamster's Commercial Terms.

CLI commands

What gets synced

Skills read .hamster/ in the current repo:

.hamster/
  .state.json      # Sync metadata (don't edit)
  {account}/
    briefs/
      {brief-slug}/
        brief.md     # The brief itself
        tasks/       # Parent tasks and subtasks
    blueprints/      # Architecture documents
    methods/         # Team conventions

Skills take the account directory name from account_slug in .state.json. HAMSTER_ACCOUNT_ID holds an account UUID, so when it is set the skills check it against account_id and stop rather than guess.

The hosted MCP tools work on one active team per user, which isn't tied to any repo. So before its first Hamster MCP call, and before each ask or change, ask-hamster calls switch_account with this repo's account_slug (your CLI team as of the last hamster sync here) and checks that the team it lands on has the same account_id. Otherwise a user in more than one team can get "not found" for tasks that exist. The server stores that choice per user, so switching also changes the team your other Hamster MCP clients use until they switch again. If the switch fails or lands on a different team, the skill stops and points you at hamster init --force or the right MCP sign-in. The other skills use the CLI, not Hamster MCP, so they don't switch.

Advanced: hosted MCP without the plugin

Use this only when you want the hosted MCP tools in a client without installing the plugin. Add https://tryhamster.com/mcp as a remote MCP connector and sign in through OAuth; see the MCP server docs for setup, the tool list, and client registration. Skills, slash commands, the CLI, and /ship come with the plugin.

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License

MIT. Copyright Wheel Go Fast, Inc. See Hamster's Privacy Policy for how Hamster handles your data. The MIT grant covers the plugin package and source files in this repository; prebuilt hamster binaries distributed through GitHub Releases are provided under Hamster's Commercial Terms.