Agent-Up

Agent-Up is a local runtime control plane for parallel AI-assisted software development.

It manages the running development environment around applications: workspaces, Git worktrees, application processes, port allocation, Docker services, isolated browser profiles, logs, diagnostics, event history, and automation surfaces.

Agent-Up is not an IDE, application framework, deployment platform, Docker replacement, Git replacement, or production orchestrator.

Development Preview: Agent-Up is under active development. CI produces preliminary platform artifacts, and installer behavior is still being hardened. APIs, configuration, and workflows may change without notice.

Why Agent-Up Exists

Parallel coding agents make runtime review harder. Each agent may need to run the same application from a different branch, with its own ports, browser state, infrastructure, logs, and diagnostics. Traditional local development workflows usually assume one developer running one application instance.

Agent-Up is built to make those parallel workspaces reviewable without process, port, infrastructure, authentication, or browser-session collisions.

What Currently Works

• Server-owned workspace registration and state.
• Source-first CLI commands for registering, listing, starting, stopping, and checking workspaces.
• Application and Docker service definitions from agent-up.json.
• Per-workspace port allocation.
• Desktop workspace list and application tabs.
• Console/log display for selected applications.
• Isolated browser URL/profile state in the desktop client.
• Feature-sliced .NET solution with server, desktop, CLI, and tests.
• Preliminary NixOS shell support for native desktop dependencies.

Current Limitations

• Source-first development preview.
• Installers are preliminary and not yet a stable update channel.
• Platform verification is expanding through native package smoke tests.
• MCP functionality is incomplete.
• REST, MCP, and configuration contracts are unstable.
• Browser behavior, diagnostics, and event recording are still experimental.
• Some documentation describes intended direction and is labeled accordingly.
• No production support commitment.

See Current Limitations for the longer list.

Architecture

AgentUp.Server is the single source of truth. Desktop, CLI, MCP clients, and future integrations are clients of the Server: they may display state and request actions, but they must not own runtime state or duplicate orchestration logic.

Contributor architecture details live in the Developer Guide, especially Architecture, Server, Desktop, and Packaging And Installers.

Requirements

• .NET SDK 10.0 preview or compatible SDK for the current target framework.
• Git.
• Docker and Docker Compose for repositories that declare Docker services.
• Node.js and npm for the documentation site.
• Nix on NixOS or Linux systems that need the provided native desktop dependency shell.

Agent-Up may work on additional platforms, but the current development setup has only been verified on NixOS.

Running From Source

Restore and build:

dotnet restore agent-up.sln
dotnet build agent-up.sln

Start the server:

dotnet run --project AgentUp.Server

The server launch profile currently uses http://localhost:5000.

Start the desktop:

dotnet run --project AgentUp.Desktop

On NixOS, use:

./run-desktop.sh

Register a repository that contains an agent-up.json:

dotnet run --project /path/to/AgentUp.CLI -- start --server http://localhost:5000

Example agent-up.json

{
  "name": "My App",
  "applications": [
    {
      "name": "Frontend",
      "command": "npm run dev",
      "path": ".",
      "ports": [
        { "variable": "PORT", "defaultPort": 3000 }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Documentation

• User docs
• Setup
• Downloads
• Workspace
• Configuration
• Browser
• CLI
• Current limitations
• Roadmap
• Developer guide

Build the docs locally:

npm --prefix docs install
npm --prefix docs run build

Contributing

Contributions are welcome while the project is in preview, especially focused bug reports, setup fixes, docs corrections, and small implementation improvements.

Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.

License

Source code and documentation are licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

The Agent-Up name and logo are project branding and are not licensed for use as a separate product identity.