Chief

Build big projects with Claude. Chief breaks your work into tasks and runs Claude Code in a loop until they're done.

Documentation · Quick Start

Install

brew install minicodemonkey/chief/chief

Or via install script:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MiniCodeMonkey/chief/refs/heads/main/install.sh | sh

Usage

# Create a new project
chief new

# Launch the TUI and press 's' to start
chief

Chief runs Claude in a Ralph Wiggum loop: each iteration starts with a fresh context window, but progress is persisted between runs. This lets Claude work through large projects without hitting context limits.

How It Works

1. Describe your project as a series of tasks
2. Chief runs Claude in a loop, one task at a time
3. One commit per task — clean git history, easy to review

See the documentation for details.

Requirements

• Claude Code CLI, Codex CLI, or OpenCode CLI installed and authenticated

Use Claude by default, or configure Codex or OpenCode in .chief/config.yaml:

agent:
  provider: opencode
  cliPath: /usr/local/bin/opencode   # optional

Or run with chief --agent opencode or set CHIEF_AGENT=opencode.

License

MIT

Acknowledgments

• @Simon-BEE — Multi-agent architecture and Codex CLI integration
• @tpaulshippy — OpenCode CLI support and NDJSON parser
• snarktank/ralph — The original Ralph implementation that inspired this project
• Geoffrey Huntley — For coining the "Ralph Wiggum loop" pattern
• Bubble Tea — TUI framework
• Lip Gloss — Terminal styling