bvandeusenandClaude Opus 5
16805ca22c
Scribe's record kinds get reached for interchangeably, and the moment of
choice is the only moment a correction is cheap. Rule 119 puts product
guidance in the instruction surfaces, so the docstring is where this
belongs — but a docstring that only documents parameters answers "how do I
call this" and leaves "should I be calling this at all" unasked.
The gap was lopsided. create_rule and start_planning already carried real
disambiguators; create_note — far and away the highest-volume surface —
carried none at all. The guidance sat in the rarest tool and was missing
from the most common one.
Each surface now opens with ONE deciding question in its own terms rather
than a pasted block:
create_note WHAT ELSE COULD HOLD THIS? note is right when nothing
is owed and nothing enforces
create_task IS ANYTHING ACTUALLY OWED? nothing owed -> note;
an arc -> start_planning
create_snippet SHAPE, OR ADVICE? a snippet is code with a
LOCATION
create_process FOLLOWED, OR READ? applies uninvoked -> rule
create_project_rule now points at the entity check too; it had only ever
covered rule-vs-rule scope.
The guard asserts STRUCTURE, never wording: each surface must name at least
two siblings. Pinning phrasing would make every improvement a test failure,
and a test that punishes editing is a test that gets deleted. Its second
half asserts the Args: block survives — the first check is satisfiable by
turning a docstring into an essay about the other tools, which would be a
worse contract than the one being fixed.
The guard caught two gaps on its first run, one of them its own: "design
system" is hard-wrapped across a line break in create_rule, so matching the
raw docstring reported it absent. _doc() now flattens whitespace. It also
caught start_planning naming only one alternative, which was true and is
now fixed.
Deliberately NOT built: an intent-router tool. It has a bootstrapping
problem — it is itself a tool that must be reached for — and MCP clients
already list every tool's description. Recorded in #3123; build it only if
wrong-surface reaches survive this.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Fabled Scribe
A self-hosted work system-of-record for software projects, built to be driven by Claude Code. Notes, tasks, issues, projects, milestones, rules, and stored processes — reachable from Claude via a built-in MCP endpoint and a bundled Claude Code plugin, with a clean web UI for humans. No in-app LLM; Claude is the sole assistant.
Features
Notes and tasks with a Markdown editor, sub-tasks, milestones, issues, and kanban project workspaces. Stored processes, an engineering rulebook system (with an inception step that decides what each project inherits), and semantic search with proactive knowledge-injection into Claude's context. A knowledge graph, per-user/group sharing, and a built-in MCP server (/mcp) plus a bundled Claude Code plugin so Claude can record and recall your work directly.
Quick Start
Prerequisites: Docker and Docker Compose. No GPU or local model needed — Claude is the sole assistant, reached over MCP.
Download docker-compose.quickstart.yml from this repo, then:
# Optional but recommended — set a secret key
export SECRET_KEY=your-random-secret-here
docker compose -f docker-compose.quickstart.yml up -d
Open http://localhost:5000. The first user to register becomes admin. To connect Claude, create an API key under Settings → API Keys and install the Claude Code plugin — see API Keys & MCP.
Development: To build from source, see Development.
Documentation
| Doc | Contents |
|---|---|
| Architecture | Stack, design decisions, data models, key services |
| Configuration | Environment variables, Docker Compose, production setup, security |
| Features | Detailed feature breakdown and keyboard shortcuts |
| Development | Dev workflow, CI/CD, migrations, release process |
| API Keys & MCP | API key management and Fable MCP install guide |
| SSO / OAuth | OIDC setup for Authentik, Keycloak, and other providers |
| API Reference | All REST API endpoints |
License
This project is privately maintained.