Bring your own LLM key. Your code never leaves your machine.
Godcoder is a local-first, fully open-source AI coding agent that runs as a native desktop app. Unlike cloud-based tools, your source code never transits a vendor backend — API requests go straight from your machine to whichever model provider you configure.
Your Machine ──► Model Provider (OpenAI / Anthropic / Any OpenAI-compatible API)
▲
│ (no middleman, no cloud backend, no data lock-in)
│
Your Code
Reimagined from the ground up. The original 2024 autonomous-dev pipeline is frozen under
v1/— preserved, not maintained.
Godcoder doesn't just use a harness. It writes one, improves it, and optimizes it — autonomously, in real time.
This is the defining capability that sets Godcoder apart. Activate Harness mode and the agent takes over its own agent loop: it scaffolds a live sandbox, engineers its own tools and workflows, runs improvement cycles, measures what works, and compounds that knowledge — all without you writing a single prompt.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ HARNESS MODE — Real-Time Self-Build │
│ │
│ START │
│ │ │
│ ▼ │
│ 🏗️ Scaffold → creates harness-build/ sandbox │
│ │ │
│ ▼ │
│ 🗺️ Route → selects the highest-value next change │
│ │ │
│ ▼ │
│ 📋 Plan → designs the improvement │
│ │ │
│ ▼ │
│ ⚙️ Execute → writes, edits, runs code │
│ │ │
│ ▼ │
│ ✅ Evaluate → verifies with the project's own checks │
│ │ │
│ ▼ │
│ 📝 Log → records outcome in persistent memory │
│ │ │
│ ▼ │
│ 🔁 Optimize → biases future iterations toward success │
│ │ │
│ └──────────────────────────────► repeat │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
How it works:
- Pick Harness in the new-session composer and press start — no prompt to type, no folder to choose.
- The agent instantly creates a dedicated
harness-build/workspace, opens it in your file explorer, and confines all new work there — reading the rest of the repo for reference but never rewriting it. - Each iteration makes one decisive, verifiable change: keep it if it's an improvement, discard it otherwise.
- Results are stored in a persistent memory store (via the ResearchSwarm bridge) so lessons from past runs rank and steer future iterations — the harness compounds knowledge over time.
- Like Freestyle mode, every tool call is auto-approved after the first confirmation.
The loop is powered by the self-optimizing-harness default skill and a ResearchSwarm bridge exposing route / log / recall / optimize over a persistent memory store.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| 🧬 Real-Time Self-Built Harness | The agent scaffolds, writes, and optimizes its own agent harness live — no human prompting required |
| 🧠 Ask / Plan / Coding / Freestyle / Harness Modes | From answering questions to fully autonomous coding — pick the depth that fits your task |
| 📝 In-place File Editing | Edit files, review diffs, rewind to checkpoints, continue from previous turns |
| 🖥️ Interactive Terminal | Built-in terminal, file explorer, and session history |
| 🔌 Any LLM Provider | Plug in OpenAI, Anthropic, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — no proxy needed |
| 🛠️ MCP Server Support | Extend the toolset with MCP servers over stdio, streamable HTTP, or SSE |
| 🎙️ Voice API Integration | Configure TTS, STT, and Voice-to-Voice from Settings — stored locally |
| 🔍 Graph-Aware Code Search | Optional Context Engine: semantic + structural search over large codebases |
| 🔒 Tool Approval Controls | Deliberate execution with subagents, skills, and approval gates |
Godcoder is built on a pure-Rust agent core with the desktop app as a thin adapter on top:
apps/desktop/ Tauri 2 + React desktop app (thin adapter)
crates/
agent/ Rust agent core — the harness (loop, tools, modes, subagents)
git-ops/ Checkpoint / diff / restore over the working tree
services/
context-engine/ Optional Go indexing service (tree-sitter → Qdrant + FalkorDB + BM25)
third_party/
ResearchSwarm-master/ Self-optimizing harness memory + bridge (Harness mode)
v1/ Legacy 2024 codegen pipeline — frozen
See ARCHITECTURE.md for a deep-dive on how these fit together.
Add an LLM key and you're immediately productive:
- ✅ In-place file edits
- ✅ Ask / Plan / Coding modes
- ✅ Checkpoint & rewind
- ✅ Diff review
- ✅ Interactive terminal & file explorer
Flip on the Context Engine (Settings → Context engine) for graph-aware, repo-scale retrieval powered by:
- tree-sitter → syntax-aware parsing
- Qdrant → vector similarity search
- FalkorDB → call-graph traversal
- BM25 → lexical search
The agent's codebase_search and codebase_graph tools query it automatically. See services/context-engine/README.md.
Prebuilt binaries are coming. For now, build from source — it's straightforward.
- Rust (stable) + Tauri 2 system prerequisites for your OS
- Node.js 20+ and npm
- (Optional, for Context Engine) Docker with Compose
cd apps/desktop
npm install
# Development
npm run tauri:dev
# Production build
npm run tauri:buildWindows shortcut: Double-click
launch-godcoder.batin the repo root — it sets up Cargo on PATH and starts the app automatically.
On first launch: Open Settings → add an LLM provider (base_url + api_key + model) → create a session → pick a folder and mode → start coding.
cd services/context-engine
cp .env.example .env # set SUPERCODER_OPENAI_API_KEY (server-side embedding key)
docker compose up -d --buildThen enable Settings → Context engine in the app. Full instructions: services/context-engine/README.md.
- Prebuilt releases & installers — CI pipeline for binaries lands next
- Benchmark harness — headless runner over the same agent core, with reproducible per-task sandboxes to measure the harness across models and validate graph-retrieval localization
- Broader provider support — the provider abstraction is built to grow
- Ask / Plan / Coding modes
- Self-optimizing Harness mode — agent builds and improves its own harness in real time
- Checkpoint & rewind
- MCP server support
- Voice API integration
- Context Engine (local, graph-aware semantic search)
Contributions are welcome! Please read CONTRIBUTING.md to get started.
- 🐛 Found a bug? Open an issue
- 💡 Have an idea? Start a discussion
- ⭐ Like the project? Give it a star — it helps more than you think!
MIT © eli-labz
If Godcoder saves you time, please consider giving it a ⭐ — it helps the project grow!