---
title: "Introduction"
description: "What agent-kit is, what it is not, and the problems it solves."
canonical_url: "https://razcue-agent-kit.vercel.app/en/getting-started/introduction"
---
# Introduction

> What agent-kit is, what it is not, and the problems it solves.

agent-kit is a minimal harness for **agent-driven development with Claude Code**. It has two parts:

- **An npx CLI** (`npx @razcue/agent-kit`) that sets a project up from fixed questions and writes plain files: `agent-kit.json`, a managed block in `AGENTS.md`, `.claude/settings.json`, `.knowledge/`, `work/`, `scripts/` and, for new projects, a scaffold.
- **A Claude Code plugin** (`agent-kit@agent-kit`) with skills, hooks, a read-only reviewer agent and zero-dependency scripts. It is versioned and installed from this repository's marketplace.

## Why it exists

Agents read whatever you load into every session and forget everything else. Without a harness, projects drift into the same failures:

<table>
<thead>
  <tr>
    <th>
      Failure
    </th>
    
    <th>
      What agent-kit does
    </th>
  </tr>
</thead>

<tbody>
  <tr>
    <td>
      A huge <code>
        AGENTS.md
      </code>
      
       loaded every session
    </td>
    
    <td>
      A short managed block; procedures in skills (loaded on demand), facts in knowledge (only summaries load). <code>
        agent-kit context
      </code>
      
       measures the cost.
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      Rules written as prose
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Hooks and checks: the git guard blocks git commands your flow forbids; preflight blocks unsafe merges.
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      Helpers rebuilt every time
    </td>
    
    <td>
      A script registry: search before writing, keep and document what is reused.
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      Sessions that forget
    </td>
    
    <td>
      A checkpoint after every turn and a "resume" section at the start of the next session.
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      Specs that rot
    </td>
    
    <td>
      Living specs per capability, changed only through approved changes, with every scenario traced to a test.
    </td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td>
      Manual QA from memory
    </td>
    
    <td>
      A QA checklist generated from the living specs and test data that grows with them.
    </td>
  </tr>
</tbody>
</table>

## Principles

- **Profile, not inference.** Your technical level, language, method and git flow are answered once; nothing is guessed from the code.
- **Enforce, don't request.** Anything a machine can check becomes a hook, a script or a permission rule.
- **Small context.** Every skill, rule and knowledge entry must earn the tokens it costs per session.
- **No runtime dependencies.** The CLI and plugin scripts use Node built-ins only (Node ≥ 20.11).
- **Claude Code only.** The kit uses Claude Code's plugins, skills, hooks and settings directly.

## Next

- [Install it](https://razcue-agent-kit.vercel.app/en/getting-started/installation) in a new or existing project.
- Read how [lanes and methods](https://razcue-agent-kit.vercel.app/en/concepts/lanes-and-methods) shape every request.


## Sitemap

See the full [sitemap](https://razcue-agent-kit.vercel.app/sitemap.md) for all pages.