Wiff

wiff

Harness-agnostic, deterministic, resumable multi-agent workflows — written as plain JavaScript. Like `wf`, but wiff.

Fan a task out to a fleet of agents with a small script instead of a prayer. You write ordinary JavaScript with agent(), /goal stages, parallel(), and pipeline(); the runtime executes it in the background, journals every step, and — when a run dies halfway through — resumes it without re-paying for a single completed agent. A disposable MCP bridge talks to a persistent local daemon, so active workflows outlive the Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, or cron process that launched them while each child runs on Codex, Claude, Cursor, or Kimi.

export const meta = {

name: "audit", description: "Audit files in parallel, fix confirmed issues in isolation", phases: [{ title: "Audit" }, { title: "Fix" }], };

phase("Audit"); const findings = await parallel( args.files.map((file) => () => agent(Audit ${file} for auth bugs, { key: audit:${file}, // stable key → free replay on resume sandbox: "read-only", schema: findingSchema, // structured JSON output }), ), );

phase("Fix"); return await parallel( findings.filter((f) => f.real).map((f) => () => agent(Fix: ${f.summary}, { key: fix:${f.file}, agentType: "surgeon", // persona from .codex/agents/surgeon.md isolation: "worktree", // own git worktree — parallel writes can't collide sandbox: "workspace-write", }), ), );

When one stage must keep working until a condition is genuinely satisfied, make it a native Codex goal:

phase("Verify and repair");

await agent("/goal Make the unit tests pass and verify the final run.", { key: "tests-green", sandbox: "workspace-write", timeoutMs: 30 * 60 * 1_000, });

Wiff holds the workflow at that statement and continues the same Codex thread while its goal is active. The next stage starts only after the worker marks the goal complete; blocked, paused, or limited goals fail explicitly.

Put durable preferences in ~/.wiff/config.json, with optional project overrides in /.wiff/config.json:

{

"version": 1, "instructions": "Verify before reporting success.", "defaults": { "model": "claude-sonnet-5", "fallbackModels": ["gpt-5.6-sol"] }, "rules": [ { "name": "fix-until-green", "when": { "phase": ["Fix", "Repair"] }, "goal": "Relevant tests must pass.", "options": { "model": "gpt-5.6-sol", "effort": "high" } } ] }

Defaults fill missing agent options; matching rules are explicit user policy and override generated workflow options. Instructions are injected alongside the task, ordered fallback models may cross backends, and applicable preference changes invalidate cached results on resume.

Why

There is no harness-agnostic workflow orchestration system. Every coding harness has some multi-agent story — Claude Code has its Workflow tool, Codex has subagents, Cursor has its own agents — but each one is welded to its harness: its runs live and die with that app, its state is invisible to everything else, and none of them can be driven from anywhere but their own chat window. wiff pulls orchestration out of the harness: a persistent local daemon owns execution and durable on-disk state while each harness gets a disposable stdio MCP bridge. Any MCP client — Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, a cron job — can start, disconnect from, watch, resume, or cancel the same runs, and the orchestration itself is a script rather than a conversation.

Ad-hoc multi-agent orchestration ("spawn some subagents for this") is also great until the run is 40 agents deep and something dies. Workflows-as-code give you:

• Determinism — the orchestration is a script, not vibes. No time, randomness, filesystem, or network inside workflow code; agents do the external work.
• Outlive the parent — closing or killing the launching MCP bridge does not interrupt a run. The detached daemon keeps executing, and another harness can reconnect with the run id.
• Resume, not retry — every agent call is journaled with a stable key and an input hash. A graceful daemon restart automatically resumes durable active runs. After an abrupt daemon or machine crash, explicitly resume the safely interrupted run: unchanged completed agents replay from cache instantly and for free. Agents that were interrupted mid-turn re-run with a digest of their previous attempt's transcript injected ("here's what you already did — continue"), and worktree agents inherit their partial checkout instead of starting over.

That screenshot is the feature: the host was killed mid-synthesis, and on resume the four finished agents came back from the journal in 0ms — only the interrupted one re-ran.

• Fail-hard semantics — a rejected agent fails the workflow loudly (parallelSettled() is the explicit opt-out). No silent nulls masquerading as success.
• Visible scheduling — agents are journaled as queued before they acquire a runtime slot and running only when backend execution starts. Queue and execution durations stay separate, while owner heartbeats make a live-but-stalled workflow visible.
• Isolation where it matters — isolation: "worktree" gives each writing agent a fresh detached git worktree. Clean ones vanish; dirty ones are kept and listed on the run for you to inspect or merge.
• Personas — agentType: "reviewer" injects a markdown persona as the child's developer instructions, with frontmatter defaults for model/effort/sandbox.

Install

Codex (plugin: MCP tools + the $workflow authoring skill):

codex plugin marketplace add https://github.com/xxxoooxoxo/wiff.git

codex plugin add wiff@wiff

Claude Code (plugin: MCP tools + skill):

claude plugin marketplace add xxxoooxoxo/wiff

claude plugin install wiff@wiff

Anything else — the server is on npm (@xxxoooxoxo/wiff) and the official MCP Registry (io.github.xxxoooxoxo/wiff), so registry-aware clients can install it by name, and everything else runs it with npx:

npx -y @xxxoooxoxo/wiff        # stdio MCP server

Or from a local checkout:

git clone https://github.com/xxxoooxoxo/wiff.git

codex plugin marketplace add ./wiff codex plugin add wiff@wiff

Then start a new Codex session and either invoke the bundled skill with $workflow or just ask: *"run this as a resumable workflow."*

Installing the plugin auto-approves its five workflow-controller tools so headless and desktop runs don't stop at an MCP approval prompt. Agent filesystem access is still governed per-call by sandbox.

Using from other harnesses (Claude Code, Cursor, any MCP client)

The Codex *plugin* is just packaging. The engine underneath is a plain stdio MCP server, so any MCP-speaking harness can orchestrate wiff workflows. The mental model: both the orchestrator and the workers are pluggable — whoever drives, each agent() child runs on a backend chosen from its model name: gpt-*/o* models run as native Codex threads via a local codex app-server (gpt-6-astra needs Codex CLI >= 0.153.4); current claude-fable-5-1, claude-fable-5, claude-opus-5, claude-sonnet-5, and claude-haiku-4-5 models—or the moving fable/opus/sonnet/haiku aliases—run as headless claude agents, composer-* and grok-* models (including cursor-grok-* slugs) run through the official Cursor SDK (@cursor/sdk) in-process, and kimi-code/* models run as headless kimi processes. A workflow can mix them freely (provider: "codex" | "claude" | "cursor" | "kimi" overrides the inference, WIFF_BACKEND sets the fallback for unrecognized models). On the Claude, Cursor, and Kimi backends, workspace-write requires isolation: "worktree"; Kimi's read-only mode is advisory because print mode auto-approves tools and has no OS sandbox.

Requirements on the machine, regardless of harness: Node >= 22, git if you use isolation: "worktree", and the runtime of whichever backend your agents use — Codex CLI

= 0.144.6

and/or claude CLI installed and authenticated, CURSOR_API_KEY for Cursor agents, or the kimi CLI configured with the requested full model alias (for example kimi-code/k3).

Claude Code — the plugin install above is the easy path. To wire just the server manually:

claude mcp add wiff -- npx -y @xxxoooxoxo/wiff

Tool calls go through Claude Code's own permission system; to skip per-call prompts, allow the five tools in .claude/settings.json:

{ "permissions": { "allow": [

"mcpwiffworkflow_start", "mcpwiffworkflow_status", "mcpwiffworkflow_wait", "mcpwiffworkflow_cancel", "mcpwiffworkflow_models" ] } }

Cursor / Windsurf / Claude Desktop — add the server to the client's mcp.json:

{

"mcpServers": { "wiff": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@xxxoooxoxo/wiff"] } } }

Notes for non-Codex hosts:

• State is shared. Every harness reads and writes the same ~/.wiff/runs/, so a run started from Codex can be watched, cancelled, or resumed from Claude Code (and vice versa), and the live viewer sees everything.
• Execution is daemon-owned. The first controller call starts one detached daemon per Wiff state root. MCP bridges may exit without affecting active work. The daemon exits after 15 idle minutes by default (WIFF_DAEMON_IDLE_MS overrides this) and writes its pid, socket, and log to ~/.wiff/daemon.json and ~/.wiff/daemon.log.
• Controllers authenticate before sending work. A 0600 secret under ~/.wiff/control/ drives a challenge-response handshake. The bridge proves daemon identity before transmitting workflow scripts or arguments; the daemon also authenticates every controller request.
• Ownership is an OS lease, not a stale file. A secret-derived loopback port is held for the daemon's complete lifetime. The operating system grants it to exactly one owner and releases it automatically on crash; only that owner may replace the control socket or lock metadata. If the derived port conflicts with unrelated local software, set WIFF_DAEMON_OWNERSHIP_PORT to an available loopback port; Wiff reports the exact conflict rather than treating it as a live owner.
• The first controller supplies the daemon environment. PATH, backend credentials, CODEX_HOME, persona paths, and Wiff defaults remain those of the bridge that started the daemon. If they change, gracefully terminate the pid recorded in ~/.wiff/daemon.json (active durable runs resume when the next bridge starts) or wait for the 15-minute idle shutdown.
• Bring the script contract into context. The `$work