citadel-local

What Is Citadel

An agent orchestration harness for Claude Code. It coordinates multiple AI agents in parallel, persists memory across sessions, and routes your intent to the cheapest execution path automatically. You install it as a plugin and it works on any codebase.

Why Citadel Exists

Without Citadel, every Claude Code session starts from zero. You re-explain architecture decisions. You re-discover that the auth module is fragile. You copy-paste the same review checklist. When a task is too big for one agent, you manually split it and lose context between the pieces. Your agents never get better at your codebase — you just get better at prompting them.

With Citadel, sessions resume where they left off. A /do review runs a structured 5-pass review that remembers what broke last time. A /do overhaul the API layer spawns parallel agents in isolated worktrees, shares discoveries between them, and merges the results. Skills you build once compound across every future session. The system learns from its own mistakes through campaign persistence and telemetry.

The difference: CLAUDE.md tells Claude about your project. Citadel gives Claude the infrastructure to work autonomously — routing, memory, safety hooks, and coordination that a .md file can't provide.

Quickstart

Prerequisites: Claude Code + Node.js 18+

# 1. Clone Citadel
git clone https://github.com/SethGammon/Citadel.git

# 2. Launch Claude Code with the plugin loaded
claude --plugin-dir /path/to/Citadel

# 3. Run setup (installs hooks, scaffolds project state)
/do setup

# 4. Try something
/do review src/main.ts

Full install guide with alternative methods

How It Works

Say what you want. /do routes it to the cheapest tool that can handle it.

/do fix the typo on line 42        # Direct edit, no model call
/do review the auth module         # 5-pass structured code review
/do why is the API returning 500   # Root cause analysis
/do build a caching layer          # Multi-step orchestrated build
/do overhaul all three services    # Parallel fleet with isolated worktrees

Classification runs across four tiers, each cheaper than the last:

1. Pattern match — catches trivial commands with regex. Zero tokens, zero model calls, instant.
2. Session state — checks if you're mid-campaign and resumes it. Still zero tokens.
3. Keyword lookup — scans your input against installed skill keywords ("review", "test", "refactor") and routes directly. Still zero tokens.
4. LLM classification — only when tiers 1-3 don't match, a structured complexity analysis (~500 tokens) determines whether you need a single-step Marshal, a multi-session Archon, or a parallel Fleet.

Most requests resolve at tiers 1-3 for free. Tier 4 is the exception, not the default. You never have to choose the tool.

See it route live

The Orchestration Ladder

Four tiers. Use the cheapest one that fits.

What You Get

Cost transparency. Citadel reads Claude Code's native session files for exact token counts and computes real cost from API pricing. You see what every session, campaign, and agent actually costs. Use /cost for a full breakdown or /dashboard for the overview. A real-time tracker alerts you at configurable spend thresholds without interrupting your work.

Safety hooks. 15 lifecycle hooks run automatically. A consent system gates external actions (pushes, PRs, comments) with first-encounter choice — always-ask, session-allow, or auto-allow. Protected branches can't be deleted. Path traversal and secrets exfiltration are blocked. A circuit breaker stops failure spirals before they burn tokens. All of this is configurable per-project in harness.json.