Cool Workflow

Get a saved report from your AI agent, with every claim tied to a line of code — not a chat answer you lose.

What is this?

Cool Workflow (cw) is a small command-line tool that turns your AI coding agent's chat answer — easy to lose, hard to check — into a saved report. Point it at a repo, or any folder of docs, and:

• It plans the work. Your question becomes a set of small tasks.
• Your agent does the work. CW never runs a model itself — your own agent reads and thinks.
• It writes a checked report. Every claim points to a real place in your code, like file.ts:42. A result with no evidence stops instead of passing through.

The model is fuel. CW is the black-box recorder, the dashboard, and the gearbox — never the engine.

It never calls a model API, never holds your keys, and never uploads your code.

Before you start

You need two things, and one more for real runs:

1. A terminal. On macOS: Terminal. On Linux: any. On Windows: install WSL (run wsl --install in PowerShell, then open "Ubuntu" from the Start menu) and type every command below in that Ubuntu window.
2. Node.js v22.13 or newer. Check with node -v. If it is missing or older, get it from nodejs.org (take the LTS one).
3. An AI coding agent, for real runs — for one, Claude Code or Codex (see Works with your agent). Not needed for the demo in step 1 of the Quick Start.

Install

npm install -g cool-workflow

cw version

cw version prints the version number when the install worked.

Install trouble?

Or install with Homebrew

brew tap coo1white/cool-workflow https://github.com/coo1white/cool-workflow

brew install coo1white/cool-workflow/cool-workflow cw version

Upgrade later with brew update && brew upgrade cool-workflow.

You need: Node.js v22.13 or newer. No agent yet? Step 1 below still works — CW never runs a model itself.

Runs on: Linux, macOS and Windows through WSL. Native Windows is not yet supported: CI runs it to measure what still fails, and that work is going on.

Works with your agent

🧪 beta: CW has a wrapper and an offline test for it, but no real login has passed cw doctor --conformance yet, and cw never picks it by itself: add its flag.

Log in to your agent once on its own (run it, for one claude, and follow its steps) before you use it with CW: CW uses your agent as it is set up, and never asks for your keys.

Not sure what you have? cw doctor checks your setup and cw fix prints the commands that put it right.

Quick Start

1 · See it work — 30 seconds, no agent needed

cw demo tamper

→ builds a real signed ledger, forges it three ways, catches all three offline

→ VERDICT: tamper-evidence holds ✓

2 · Ask a question about your code — one command

cw -q "How does auth work end-to-end here?"

CW uses the current repo and the first agent it finds on your PATH. Want a specific agent? Add a flag from the table above, such as -claude.

A full review takes about 4 minutes on a real repo (14 workers; the Map and Assess stages run at the same time). One focused question? Add --fast: 6 workers in place of 14, the same cited answer for fewer agent calls.

3 · Open the report

The report opens in your browser by itself when the run ends. It starts with the answer, then the evidence behind it. Later, open it again with:

cw report --open

Want to see one first? A real run's Workbench and report, rebuilt on every push: [coo1white.github.io/cool-workflow](https://coo1white.github.io/cool-workflow/) (the report is at /report.html).

4 · Keep proof that your tests passed

An agent that says "all tests pass" has only said it. Run the tests through CW and keep a receipt:

cw check -- npm test

→ ✓ passed: npm test (exit 0 at 1a2b3c4) — receipt rc-…. Cite it as receipt:rc-…

CW runs your command (never a model) and saves what happened: the commit, the exit code, a digest of the output. A result that cites receipt:rc-… is checked again before it counts: a failed run, a missing receipt, or code that changed since the run is turned down, with the one command to fix it. cw check list shows your receipts.

These steps are the core path. Everything else is kept working, not grown.

Words you will see

Can You Trust the Report?

CW does not run the model — it keeps the books. Your agent signs its findings (ed25519), and cw report verify-bundle checks — offline, with only the public key — that every signed finding is in the report unaltered. CW holds no private key: the agent signs, CW only verifies. This proves the signed findings reached you unaltered — not that nothing else was added, and not that none were left out. See the [Trust Model](plugins/cool-workflow/docs/trust-model.md).

Troubleshooting

Learn more

• [User Guide](https://github.com/coo1white/cool-workflow/wiki/User-Guide) — your first ten minutes
• [Why Cool Workflow](https://github.com/coo1white/cool-workflow/wiki/Mental-Model)
• [How it works](https://github.com/coo1white/cool-workflow/wiki/Architecture)
• [What you can run](https://github.com/coo1white/cool-workflow/wiki/Workflow-Apps)
• [From your editor](https://github.com/coo1white/cool-workflow/wiki/MCP-And-Manifests#from-your-editor)
• [Trust & Audit](https://github.com/coo1white/cool-workflow/wiki/Trust-And-Audit)
• [Repo Map](https://github.com/coo1white/cool-workflow/wiki/Repo-Map)
• [Wiki home](https://github.com/coo1white/cool-workflow/wiki)
• [Contributing](.github/CONTRIBUTING.md) — to change CW itself: where to start for each job, the rules, and how to report a security problem

CW dogfoods its own release: every cut runs release-cut against this repo.

License

BSD-2-Clause. Built by COOLWHITE LLC.