otter

Allows you to define workflows that will automatically be executed in the background on your machine.

It is designed to be easily extensible and workflows can be built to respond to events such as being tagged as a reviewer, assigned to tickets or react to whatever API you have access to.

• Workflows are TOML-defined series of steps
• Steps can drive bash scripts, Claude, Copilot or any AI CLI
• Checkpoints pause for human review and feedback
• Workspaces isolate workflows per-run

All driven by an intuitive TUI dashboard.

Prerequisites

• For agent steps: Any of Claude Code, Copilot CLI, other AI CLI tools
• For sandbox: Podman

Quick Start

# Install workflow
otter workflow install examples/hello-world

# Start background service
otter service start

# Open the TUI
otter
# or start workflow via CLI:
otter start hello-world

# Stop background service
otter service stop

Common Commands

Command
otter	open the TUI dashboard
otter help	show all commands
otter status	list service, workflow, and marketplace state
otter update	install a newer otter release
otter start <name>	start or resume a workflow
otter stop <name>	stop a running workflow

Managing the otter service

Command
otter service start	bring the service up
otter service stop	take it down
otter service enable	enable auto-boot
otter service disable	disable auto-boot

Example Workflows

Can be found in the examples/ directory.

Marketplaces

Install workflows by name from any git repo that publishes them. This repository doubles as one:

otter marketplace add "$(pwd)"
otter workflow install todo-impl@otter

Build

cargo build --release
# Binary is at: target/release/otter

User Data

Purpose	Linux	Windows
Configuration & workflows	~/.config/otter/	%APPDATA%\otter\
State, logs & run scratch dirs	~/.local/share/otter/	%APPDATA%\otter\

otter service enable is the only path that writes outside these directories (it installs a systemd user unit to ~/.config/systemd/user/otter.service). otter service disable removes it.

Configuration Reference

A reference for all possible configurations (step types, triggers and workspace configuration) can be found in the usage guide.