radcad

radcad

Personal knowledge management — with spec-driven discipline.

radcad is a local-first AI agent for your own files, your own knowledge, your own work. It plans every non-trivial task through an Explore → Design → Apply → Verify loop borrowed from OpenSpec, records the trail as plain Markdown in a git-versioned vault, and stays out of the way on trivial asks. Your notes, your memory, your decisions — auditable tomorrow, diffable next year, browsable in Obsidian or any editor.

The pitch in one line: run your life with structure — propose, verify, remember — and get an agent that actually does it with you.

---

Install

Prerequisites: Claude Code ≥ 2.1.89, Bun ≥ 1.3, a Pro/Max subscription (claude auth login) or ANTHROPIC_API_KEY.

The radcad GitHub repo ships both the CLI (TypeScript on Bun) and a Claude Code plugin marketplace. You can use either or both.

(recommended) Option A — CLI + optional plugin

The CLI launches Claude Code with your vault's AGENTS.md as the full system prompt. The plugin adds skills, slash commands, and a path-scoping safety hook.

# 1. Clone radcad and link the CLI globally
git clone https://github.com/radishbuild/radcad.git
cd radcad
bun install
bun link                                 # makes `radcad` globally callable

# 2. (Optional) Add the plugin marketplace (from your local clone, or once pushed,
#    from GitHub directly — both work)
claude plugin marketplace add "$(pwd)"   # local clone
# OR, once the repo is on GitHub:
claude plugin marketplace add radishbuild/radcad

# 4. Install the plugin
claude plugin install radcad@radishbuild

Option B — plugin only (VS Code graphical panel)

If you live in the Claude Code VS Code extension and don't want to use a terminal CLI, you can install just the plugin:

1. Open the Claude Code panel in VS Code.
2. In the prompt box, type /plugins.
3. Click the Marketplaces tab → Add marketplace.
4. Enter radishbuild/radcad (or the local path to your clone).
5. Back on the Plugins tab, find radcad and click Install.

Then scaffold a vault manually (mkdir -p ~/radcad-vault/{memory,jobs,resources/{fetched,generated}} and copy the templates from plugin/templates/), or invoke /radcad:init ~/radcad-vault inside any Claude Code session once the plugin is loaded. Note the caveat in Use from VS Code below about system-prompt replacement.

npm / maintained marketplace — not live yet. Once published, bun add -g radcad (or npm i -g radcad) will replace the git-clone + bun-link step. The plugin marketplace flow above is already functional today.

Use

# First time: scaffold a vault anywhere you like
radcad init ~/radcad-vault

# Start a session
radcad                     # uses $RADCAD_VAULT or ~/radcad-vault
radcad --vault ~/my-vault  # or point explicitly

That's the whole thing. radcad reads your vault's AGENTS.md as the full system prompt and hands the session to Claude Code. You talk to it; it classifies each request, either acts directly (Light) or walks the four-phase loop (Full), and leaves a reviewable trail in your vault.

Try this first:

You: Plan a Saturday hike.
radcad: Classification: Full — ambiguous (where, how long, who?). Starting Explore.
        <asks one clarifying question>
        → writes jobs/2026-04-21-plan-saturday-hike/plan.md

Open ~/radcad-vault/jobs/2026-04-21-plan-saturday-hike/plan.md in VSCode/Obsidian, watch it grow through the phases, git diff it whenever you want to see what the agent did.

---

What makes radcad different

• Spec-driven, applied to personal work. Every Full-tier task commits to numbered acceptance criteria before work starts. Verify checks each criterion verbatim with evidence. No wishful "looks good" hand-waves.
• One file per job. No sprawl. A Full job is a single plan.md that grows — scope, criteria, tasks (work + verify), decisions — through each phase.
• Organic memory. No memory/travel/, memory/food/ preset folders. Memory filenames emerge from content; a flat MEMORY.md index gives you wikilink-and-descriptor glance-ability.
• Your vault, your stance. AGENTS.md (the agent's operating rules) lives in your vault, not in the plugin. Edit it to tune the agent's behavior. Plugin updates never stomp your edits.
• Obsidian-native. Wikilinks, YAML frontmatter, flat Markdown everywhere. Open the folder in Obsidian and you've got a knowledge graph.
• Git is the audit log. Every change is a commit in your vault's own git history. Time-travel whenever you want.
• Local-first, no cloud tax. Runs under your Claude Pro/Max subscription. No per-session metered costs. Laptop closed, work stops — that's the trade.

---

Your vault at a glance