I built this because finished does not mean correct. One run: an internal check approved the work, but the next stage wanted that approval in a slightly different format. Good work, rejected three times until max retries. Final answer: failure. Nothing crashed; just a tiny handoff bug dressed up as a careful decision. That is real agent failure: bad handoffs, missing context, fake done. Most products assume someone is watching. Agent AFK assumes you are not.
— Griffin Long, who builds Agent AFK
Agent AFK is built to change that: parallel hypotheses, isolated worktrees, and verification by default, all governed by traces, terminal states, and reversibility rules.
02control
What it adds
Familiar surface. Deeper machinery.
Orchestration, routing, traces, verification, supervision: wired into the loop, not bolted on.
Subagent orchestration
Most agents can spawn subagents but rarely do. AFK makes them the default. One interrupt kills the whole tree.
Prompt & skill routing
Type /diagnose for a real pipeline: parallel hypotheses, isolated worktrees, verification. One command, not one long prompt and hope.
Local trace history
When a midnight run goes sideways, read exactly what happened: every session, subagent, and tool call on disk under ~/.afk/.
Tool visibility
Every tool call inline: arguments, output, timing. When the agent says done, check what it actually did.
Verification workflows
A second adversarial agent re-derives claims before they reach your diff: finished has to prove it is correct.
Remote supervision
Leave the desk. Your phone buzzes when the run finishes or stalls: answer, redirect, or interrupt from Telegram.
03runtime
Reversibility-aware autonomy
Move fast on safe work. Slow down on risky work.
The hard part is multi-step work without doing something irreversible too early. AFK builds that into the loop.
Small blast radius
Reversible edits, isolated worktrees, scratch files: move without ceremony.
Larger blast radius
Commits, pushes, deletes, external calls: gated or verified.
Terminal states
Done, Blocked, Asking, Interrupted. The agent knows when to stop.
Recovery paths
Plans, traces, and session state persist under ~/.afk/. Inspect, resume, roll back.
Tell it once. The next session reads it: preferences, conventions, and decisions land in ~/.afk/, searchable from any run.
Most agent tools
Linear by default, one pass
One chat thread
Trust the answer
Manual babysitting
Prompt workflows
Vague stopping points
State lives in the transcript
Agent AFK
Parallel by default, governed by design
Multi-stage skills with explicit contracts
Adversarial verification before you act
Parallel execution lanes
Reversibility-aware autonomy
Explicit terminal states
Local trace history in ~/.afk/
04skills
Composable orchestration primitives
Slash skills, not single prompts.
One command, a full parallel pipeline: each skill fans out subagents, gathers results, and re-checks. That's the orchestration you'd otherwise ask for every time. Eleven ship in the box; /forge makes more.
/mint
End-to-end feature pipeline: spec → research → plan → parallelize → build → verify → heal → ship.
Ship-ready in one pass; pauses for approval.
/diagnose
Parallel hypotheses for bugs and failing tests.
Each validated in an isolated git worktree.
/shadow-verify
Adversarial re-derivation of sub-agent claims before you act.
Re-checked before the build pipeline.
/forge
Generate new skills autonomously, gated by L1 capability evals.
Finds gaps, drafts, runs a qualify loop.
/parallelize
Turn a linear plan into dependency-aware parallel waves.
Respects file and import dependencies.
/review
Parallel reviewers across a diff or PR: security, correctness, api-compat, tests, perf.
Synthesized by severity into a merge recommendation.
/ship
Release pipeline for finished local work: pre-flight, tests, commit, push, PR.
With optional adversarial verification.
/spec
Turn a loose idea into a structured, actionable spec.
Phase 1 of /mint.
/research
Two sub-agents (web context + local repo context) merged into one brief.
External and local, combined.
/devils-advocate
Three parallel critics invent alternatives; a synthesis step ranks all four.
Pragmatist, paranoid, architect lenses; a ranker picks.
/gather
Parallel context-gathering for code you're about to edit.
Structure and test-coverage agents, one wave.
05architecture
Architecture
Three attach surfaces. One isolated root.
All three converge on ~/.afk/: config, plugins, plans, skills, session traces, memory. Nothing leaks into your global config.
Surface 01
CLI REPL
Interactive TUI. Streaming chat, plan mode, slash skills, background tasks.
Surface 02
Daemon
Background loop. Runs unattended with bypass-permissions and plan persistence.
Surface 03
Telegram Bridge
Mobile attach. Send messages, tail output, interrupt from anywhere.