An agent meta-harness for Claude Code and Codex.
Get started in one command
Run this in your project folder:
npx ruflo@latest init
Then open Claude Code in the same folder and give it a real task, for example:
Use a ruflo swarm to review this repo: find the riskiest module, write tests for it, and summarise what you changed.
init adds ruflo's agents, hooks, memory and MCP server to the project, and Claude Code picks them up on its next start. Codex and other MCP clients work too: point them at npx -y ruflo@latest mcp start.
First useful task, step by step · User guide · Compare install paths
Claude Code plugins only. This route installs core tools, the visual console and runtime mods, with no files added to your project. It needs Claude Code 2.1.287 or later. Run inside Claude Code:
/plugin marketplace add ruvnet/ruflo
/plugin install ruflo-core@ruflo
/plugin install ruflo-console@ruflo
/plugin install ruflo-mods@ruflo
/reload-plugins
/ruflo
From a terminal, on Claude Code 2.1.292 or later: claude plugin install ruflo-core@ruflo --marketplace ruvnet/ruflo. Mods run with your account's permissions, so review their code before installing.
Codex or another MCP client, without project setup. Configure the command npx with the arguments ["-y", "ruflo@latest", "mcp", "start"]. To set up a project interactively, run npx ruflo@latest init wizard.
Plain terminal. The console also runs on its own, without Claude Code: npx ruflo tui. Add --plain to print one frame for scripts. See the terminal UI guide.
Optional: ruOS Desktop
Connect ruOS to ChatGPT or Claude via MCP:
https://ruos.cognitum.one/mcp
npx ruvector
Ruflo
English · 简体中文
📖 RuFlo Explained — Build an AI Team That Plans, Remembers, Tests, and Improves
A 14-chapter guide: from the basic idea to a first useful task, then memory, agent teams, plugins, cost and verification.
Agent = Model + Harness. The model writes; the harness gives it tools, memory, loops, sandboxes, and controls so it can actually work. Ruflo is the harness — the execution layer around Claude Code and Codex that adds 100+ specialized agents, coordinated swarms, self-learning memory, federated comms across machines, and enterprise security guardrails. So agents don't just run, they collaborate.
One npx ruflo init gives Claude Code a nervous system: agents self-organize into swarms, learn from every task, remember across sessions, and — with federation — securely talk to agents on other machines without leaking data. You keep writing code. Ruflo handles the coordination.
Conceptual learning loop. Local vector retrieval and contrastive updates can run without an LLM; embeddings and configured learning modules are still required. See the RuVector training integration and trajectory contrastive learning.
User → Ruflo (CLI/MCP) → Router → Swarm → Agents → Memory → LLM providers. Memory feeds useful experience back into routing. This is a conceptual flow, not a live execution trace.
New to Ruflo? You don't need to learn 406 MCP tools or 61 CLI commands. After init, just use Claude Code normally — the hooks system automatically routes tasks, learns from successful patterns, and coordinates agents in the background.
An origin you can inspect
Built by Reuven Cohen (rUv), originally as Claude Flow. The first commit, June 2, 2025, describes a code orchestration layer for recursive agent cycles: Claude writes, edits, tests and improves. The June 10 source snapshot adds orchestration, task scheduling, memory and terminal modules.
A harness is the workbench around the model: it organizes tasks, carries context between steps and helps check results. This establishes Ruflo's lineage, not a universal first across every Claude Code tool. See the illustrated explainer, exact commits and earlier ecosystem context.
Grok Build: npx ruflo init --grok writes the project host surface (.grok/, the team bus, and the operator guide) and nothing outside the project; add --dry-run to preview. Setup, the spawn_subagent contract, the optional status row, and what to re-check when Grok updates: the Grok operator guide.
Claude Flow is now Ruflo — named by rUv, who loves Rust, flow states, and building things that feel inevitable. The "Ru" is the rUv. The "flo" is working until 3am. Underneath, powered by Cognitum.One agentic architecture, running a supercharged Rust-based AI engine, embeddings, memory, and plugin system.
Open animated demo · Theme Studio guide · Workflow demo
Your agent cockpit. Track workflows, agents, models, tokens and cost beside Claude Code. The 38 second animation shows Orbital and Theme Studio through actual renderer frames, including boot checks, six palettes, customization, saved themes, JSON import and resizing. This compact 3.84 MB SVG retains all 456 frames. Native host and AI provider execution are not demonstrated.
Inspect any run. Open agent logs and results, search, triage failures, replay and compare. Start with npx ruflo init, restart Claude Code, then /ruflo. Full console tour.
Let Claude drive. You set the limits. Enable Settings → Claude control to navigate and run console actions. Choose read, write, manage or full, with ask or auto approval. The current default is read + ask; raising the level is your choice. Actions above your permission level are refused, and network, spending and destructive actions require confirmation even in auto. Review the live action log or press Take back control to stop Claude control. Details.
One task: create a mission with Claude
Watch the recorded console session below. Claude creates a mission, opens the Learning and Security pages, and reports its actions in Overview.
- Set the boundary. Install the console using the commands below, open
/ruflo, then choose Settings → Claude control → write + ask.
- Give a concrete request. Try: “Create a mission to add a dark mode toggle. Show me the mission and its status.”
- Approve creation. Claude opens Missions and sets the goal. Confirm the pending create action in the console.
- Verify the result. Check that Missions contains the goal and Overview records the action. Creating a mission does not mean the feature has been implemented.
- Keep control. Take back control pauses Claude's console tools. A later call should be refused until you restore control.
What the recording demonstrates: a real Claude Haiku session with write + auto, mission creation, page navigation, a refused swarm stop, and control being taken back. The steps above use ask so you approve creation yourself. The linked workflow animation uses sample data, while the theme demo replays renderer frames. Neither is evidence of completed swarm work or memory recall.
Implementation and recorded test findings · Reproduction script
Install the mods from the ruflo marketplace (Claude Code 2.1.287 or later; mods run with your account's permissions and are not sandboxed, so read the code first):
/plugin marketplace add ruvnet/ruflo
/plugin install ruflo-console@ruflo
/plugin install ruflo-mods@ruflo
/reload-plugins
ruflo-console is the cockpit above, ruflo-mods routes prompts and enforces policy in-process, ruflo-swarm shows the swarm in a pane, and ruflo-ruos adds the ruOS status segment. Open /plugin to confirm they appear in the active mods line. Inside the console, /ruflo market is the Plugin Catalog: every ruflo plugin, mod and skill with what it ships, and buttons to install, enable, disable and update (each asks first).
What You Get
| Capability | Description |
|---|
| 100+ Agents | Specialized agents for coding, testing, security, docs, architecture |
| Comms Layer | Zero-trust federation — agents across machines/orgs discover, authenticate, and exchange work securely |
| Swarm Coordination | Hierarchical, mesh, and adaptive topologies with consensus |
| Self-Learning | SONA neural patterns, ReasoningBank, trajectory learning |
| Vector Memory | HNSW-indexed AgentDB — measured ~1.9x faster at N=20k, ~3.2x–4.7x at N=5k vs brute force (recall@10 ~0.99); ANN wins above the crossover, ties/loses at small N. See audit + scripts/benchmark-intelligence.mjs |
| Background Workers | 12 auto-triggered workers (audit, optimize, testgaps, etc.) |
| Plugin Marketplace | 48 native Claude Code plugins + 14 in-tree npm plugins |
| Multi-Provider | Claude, GPT, Gemini, Cohere, Ollama with smart routing |
| Security | AIDefence, input validation, CVE remediation, path traversal prevention |
| Agent Federation | Cross-installation agent collaboration with zero-trust security |
| MetaHarness | Audit your AI agent setup before you ship. Grade readiness (1-100), scan tool configs for security issues, snapshot the whole project to catch regressions over time, and find templates that match your repo. ruflo eject turns a ruflo project into a standalone agent toolkit with its own name. Full guide. |
Learning from experience
Useful trajectories and task feedback can inform future work. Results depend on the configured memory, learning components and quality of feedback. Learning plugin.
Agent Federation — Slack for Agents
Slack gave teams channels. Federation gives agents the same thing — shared workspaces across trust boundaries, where agents on different machines, orgs, or cloud regions can discover each other, prove who they are, and collaborate on tasks.
The difference: some channels are trusted, some aren't. @claude-flow/plugin-agent-federation handles that automatically. Your agents join a federation, get verified via mTLS + ed25519, and start exchanging work — with PII stripped before anything leaves your node and every message auditable. Untrusted agents can still participate at lower privilege: they see discovery info, not your memory. As they prove reliable, trust upgrades. If they misbehave, they get downgraded instantly — no human in the loop required.
You don't configure handshakes or manage certificates. You federation init, federation join, and your agents start talking. The protocol handles identity, the PII pipeline handles data safety, and the audit trail handles compliance.
📘 Full user guide: docs/federation/ — setup, MCP tools, trust levels, circuit breaker, and the (opt-in) WireGuard mesh layer that ties packet-layer reachability to federation trust. ADR-111 deep-dive at docs/federation/phase7-mesh-bringup.md.
| Capability | How it works |
|---|
| 🔒 | Zero-trust federation | Remote agents start untrusted. Identity proven via mTLS + ed25519 challenge-response. No API keys, no shared secrets. |
| 🛡️ | PII-gated data flow | 14-type detection pipeline scans every outbound message. Per-trust-level policies: BLOCK, REDACT, HASH, or PASS. Adaptive calibration reduces false positives. |
| 📊 | Behavioral trust scoring | Formula (0.4×success + 0.2×uptime + 0.2×threat + 0.2×integrity) continuously evaluates peers. Upgrades require history; downgrades are instant. |
| 📋 | Compliance built-in | HIPAA, SOC2, GDPR audit trails as compliance modes. Every federation event produces a structured record searchable via HNSW. |
| 🤝 | 9 MCP tools + 10 CLI commands | Full lifecycle: federation_init, federation_send, federation_trust, federation_audit, and more. |
# Team A: initialize federation and generate keypair
npx claude-flow@latest federation init
# Team A: join Team B's federation endpoint
npx claude-flow@latest federation join wss://team-b.example.com:8443
# Team A: send a task — PII is stripped automatically before it leaves
npx claude-flow@latest federation send --to team-b --type task-request \
--message "Analyze transaction patterns for account anomalies"
# Team A: check peer trust levels and session health
npx claude-flow@latest federation status
See issue #1669 for the complete architecture, trust model, and implementation roadmap.
# Claude Code plugin
/plugin install ruflo-federation@ruflo
# Or via CLI
npx claude-flow@latest plugins install @claude-flow/plugin-agent-federation
| Capability | Claude Code Alone | + Ruflo |
|---|
| Agent Collaboration | Isolated, no shared context | Swarms with shared memory and consensus |
| Coordination | Manual orchestration | Queen-led hierarchy (Raft, Byzantine, Gossip) |
| Memory | Session-only | HNSW vector memory with sub-ms retrieval |
| Learning | Static behavior | SONA self-learning with pattern matching |
| Task Routing | You decide | Intelligent routing (89% accuracy) |
| Background Workers | None | 12 auto-triggered workers |
| LLM Providers | Anthropic only | 5 providers with failover |
| Security | Standard | CVE-hardened with AIDefence |
User --> Claude Code / CLI
|
v
Orchestration Layer
(MCP Server, Router, 27 Hooks)
|
v
Swarm Coordination
(Queen, Topology, Consensus)
|
v
100+ Specialized Agents
(coder, tester, reviewer, architect, security...)
|
v
Memory & Learning
(AgentDB, HNSW, SONA, ReasoningBank)
|
v
LLM Providers
(Claude, GPT, Gemini, Cohere, Ollama)
Documentation
Four docs for four audiences:
| Doc | When to read it |
|---|
| Status | See what currently works — capability counts, test baselines, recent fixes, what's next. The is-it-ready doc. |
| User Guide | Daily reference — every command, every config flag, every plugin. The how-do-I doc. |
| Compare frameworks | Deciding between Ruflo, Claude Code built-in agents, CrewAI, LangGraph, or AutoGen. The which-one-for-me doc. |
| MetaHarness Guide | How to grade your agent setup, scan tool configs for security, detect changes between runs, and eject a project into a standalone agent toolkit. The audit-my-setup doc. |
| Benchmarks | v3.8.0 SOTA matrix vs LangGraph / AutoGen / CrewAI on darwin-arm64 + linux-x64. ruflo wins cold start, single turn, RSS by 1.3×–1953×. The is-it-fast doc. |
| Verification | Cryptographically prove your installed bytes match the signed witness — ruflo verify. The trust-but-verify doc. |
| Team Gateway Checklist | Before-merge gates, dual-mode handoff, memory namespace sharing, and witness manifest entry per merge. The safer-team-workflows doc. |
Benchmark internals (for reproduction): sota-workload-spec.md · SOTA-PROGRESS.md · raw matrix JSON: darwin · linux
User Guide section index:
| Section | Topics |
|---|
| Quick Start | Installation, prerequisites, install profiles |
| Core Features | MCP tools, agents, memory, neural learning |
| Intelligence & Learning | Hooks, workers, SONA, model routing |
| Swarm & Coordination | Topologies, consensus, hive mind |
| Security | AIDefence, CVE remediation, validation |
| Ecosystem | RuVector, agentic-flow, Flow Nexus |
| Configuration | Environment variables, config schema |
| Plugin Marketplace | Browse and install plugins |
Support
License
MIT - RuvNet