Ambit

Ambit

A Civilization-style tech tree of what your AI agents can do, and what one more step would unlock.

Ambit reads the configs of Claude Code, Cursor, OpenCode and 13 other agent runtimes into one local map. What you, your agents and your machines can jointly do is your *ambit*: this shows where its edge is and how to move it.

Try the live demo · Get started · Connect it to your agent · FAQ · Docs

Pick a next step and the map shows what it opens. Switch off something you rely on and it counts what stops.

npx ambit-cli, or brew install zz-plant/tap/ambit && ambit, or open the hosted demo and install nothing.

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What it tells you

• What is one step away. Capabilities whose prerequisites you already meet, each with a setup estimate, ranked by what keeps blocking your agents and by how much each step opens. Tools also compose: a vector store plus local embeddings gives you semantic retrieval, which neither config mentions.
• What is configured but not working. ambit verify runs a capability's declared check. One that fails is left out of plans and permissions until it passes.
• What your tool lists cost. ambit weigh starts each local tool server your user-level configs declare and measures what its tool list takes from context every session.
• What stops if a piece goes. Three providers that share one API credential show up as one point of failure.

Your agents can ask the same questions over MCP: what they can do before they try, and at a limit, what would lift it, drafted as a change you approve. Ambit is a *meta-MCP server*, speaking the protocol of the tools it reads. The graph is a local SQLite file, with no telemetry.

On a small setup, Ambit mostly answers what to add next. On a larger one, with several runtimes and a second machine, it mostly answers which configured tools fail their checks and what would stop with them. The words it uses are defined further down.

If it answers a question your config files could not, a star is how the next person with the same stack finds it.

Get started

npm installs the tagged release on macOS, Linux and Windows, and Homebrew on macOS and Linux. On Windows ./bootstrap.sh does not run, ambit weigh cannot start a server launched through a .cmd such as npx, and a check written for sh stays unverified unless Git Bash or another sh is on the PATH. ./bootstrap.sh discovers OpenCode, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Gemini CLI, Claude Desktop, Codex CLI, Cline, Roo Code, Continue, Zed, VS Code, Copilot CLI, Amp, Goose and Kiro, the skill directories ~/.agents/skills, ~/.opencode/skills and ~/.config/opencode/skills, and the models Ollama and LM Studio keep on disk, builds a local SQLite graph, prints the same readout npx ambit-cli does, and links ambit into ~/.local/bin when that directory is on your PATH (or prints the ln -s line when it is not). ./bootstrap.sh --dry-run writes nothing: it reports whether there is an OpenCode config, a running Ollama and a skills directory.

My Setup lists every server, agent, and model found on the machine: whether it is on, what its check said, and which capabilities on the map it provides

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Where Ambit sits in the stack

Ambit sits above the protocol layer and below workflow orchestration. Its CLI, MCP server and gate neither route an agent's calls nor run them. The one part that can run an agent's step is the control plane, which you start yourself from a checkout, and only with its opt-in Docker adapter.

For the architectural foundation, economic loop, and comparison to prior work, see The ideas behind Ambit, Your loadout, from A to B, and Building alone.

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Ask from the terminal

ambit help covers a first session. ambit help plan, or any of the five group names, lists what that group holds, one line a command; ambit help goal shows one command with its options, ambit help frontier explains one word, and ambit help --all is the full surface. --help after any command says what it does without running it.

The commands above read the capability graph. A second group (attention, work, usage, opportunities, roi, audit) reads a local work ledger: the human time and cost of running the stack. Until sessions are recorded they say which data is missing instead of printing a number, and they say more once a few weeks are recorded. The FAQ explains how to start recording.

ambit status — where the environment stands

$ ambit status

15 of 46 reached, and 20 of your own · 0 verified · 8 with a single provider ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── verified 0 › unverified 15 11 provable now · 4 with no check failing 0 entries 24 from your config, and 4 built into the runtime last check never

Provable now Automated Tests, Browser Automation, Code Intelligence, Continuous Delivery, Data Access, File Editing, Local Runtime, Shell Execution and 3 more

By domain ████░░░░░░ ai-ml 5/13 ██████░░░░ backend 7/11 █████░░░░░ devops 4/8 …

Next ambit verify · turns 11 of the unverified into evidence

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This is a fresh graph, before any check has run: reached and verified lead, the curated capabilities first and then the servers, models and runtimes of your own, the four counts under the rule add up to the two reached figures together with the four built-ins every runtime brings, the › marks the count that wants a person, and the last line names the next command to type. CI captures the block from a fixture graph and fails if it drifts from what the command prints.

ambit impact — downstream dependency impact

$ ambit impact mcp:playwright

If playwright went away ─────────────────────── › Stops working Automated Tests, Browser Automation, Continuous Delivery, Observability · and the 3 actions they confer Survives Tool Protocol (12 other providers)

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Affected capabilities are listed first, marked with ›, through the full dependency chain: if Continuous Delivery requires Automated Tests, it fails as well. Surviving capabilities show their remaining provider count, accounting for shared credentials that would fail together. Given a credential, impact answers what revoking it ends, matching ambit credentials.

ambit share — what may leave the graph, and what may not

ambit share builds its HTML from an allow-list: name