# Glyph > Glyph is a workbench for composing the forms intelligence takes today — and discovering the language it will speak tomorrow. - **Type:** MCP server - **Install:** `agentstack add mcp-glyphs-ai-glyph` - **Verified:** Yes — security-reviewed for prompt injection and unsafe behavior - **Seller:** [glyphs-ai](https://agentstack.voostack.com/s/glyphs-ai) - **Installs:** 0 - **Category:** [Integrations](https://agentstack.voostack.com/c/integrations) - **Latest version:** 0.1.0 - **License:** MIT - **Upstream author:** [glyphs-ai](https://github.com/glyphs-ai) - **Source:** https://github.com/glyphs-ai/glyph ## Install ```sh agentstack add mcp-glyphs-ai-glyph ``` Requires the [AgentStack CLI](https://agentstack.voostack.com/docs/cli). Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and any MCP-compatible agent. ## About # Glyph [](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@glyphs-ai/glyph) [](https://github.com/glyphs-ai/glyph/actions/workflows/ci.yml) [](./LICENSE) A glyph is the visible form of an idea. In typography, the *character* is abstract; the *glyph* is how that character is rendered in a particular font, weight, and context. The character is the meaning; glyphs are the forms it takes. We believe intelligence works the same way. Intent, reasoning, memory, and collaboration are the abstractions. What we actually touch — models, prompts, agents, tools, workflows — are their current glyphs. Those forms will keep changing. The abstractions beneath them won't. Glyph the project is a workbench for exploring, composing, and evolving those forms, while staying independent of any particular implementation or era of AI. The future of intelligence is unlikely to be written in today's language — we're still learning its alphabet. > **Pre-1.0 — APIs may change.** Targeted at solo developers and small teams > running glyph against their own machine; multi-user deployment is not yet > a goal. ## Quickstart Requires Node 22+. ```sh npm install -g @glyphs-ai/glyph glyph start ``` Then open in your browser. `glyph start` runs the server as a detached background process so the terminal is free; the rest of the lifecycle is `glyph stop`, `glyph restart`, `glyph status`, and `glyph logs -f`. Run `glyph help` (or just `glyph`) for the full command tree, or `glyph serve` to keep it in the foreground (the legacy behaviour, useful for `tmux` panes or `systemd` units). The first time you run `glyph`, the dashboard's landing page is empty. Walk through: 1. **Add a workspace** — give it a display name. Optionally pick a directory on disk; if you don't, glyph creates one under `$GLYPH_HOME/workspaces//` so the workspace id and the on-disk directory share the same name. Either way glyph writes a `workspace.db` SQLite file plus `sessions/` and `tasks/` subdirs inside; existing files in a user-supplied directory are left alone. 2. **Install an agent** in the Catalog tab — point at any directory containing an `AGENTS.md` (a [Claude-style agent](https://www.claude.com/news/agent-skills); any directory with valid frontmatter works). Skills + MCPs the agent depends on go in the same way. 3. **Dispatch a task** in the Tasks tab — pick the agent, write a brief (one-line goal) and optional details, click *Dispatch*. The agent runs unattended in a new sandbox under `tasks//`; the dashboard shows the live event stream and folds the exit into a final `succeeded` / `failed` / `cancelled` status. 4. **Or open a session** in the Sessions tab — interactive workdir; glyph bakes the agent into it and gives you the exact `copilot` invocation to run yourself. ## Install from GitHub Release tarball Use this when you can't install from the public npm registry (private network policy, no mirror, etc.). Requires Node 22+ and npm. Every tagged release on this repo attaches the same `.tgz` that gets pushed to npm as a downloadable asset. `npm install` accepts an HTTPS URL directly — no local download step: ```sh npm install -g https://github.com/glyphs-ai/glyph/releases/download/vX.Y.Z/glyphs-ai-glyph-X.Y.Z.tgz ``` Substitute `X.Y.Z` (twice — in the tag and in the filename) for the target release version. npm fetches over HTTPS and installs in one step; nothing is written to the current working directory. The tarball filename follows npm's scoped-package slugification — `@glyphs-ai/glyph` becomes `glyphs-ai-glyph-X.Y.Z.tgz` (the leading `@` and the `/` collapse to `-`). ## Configuration All configuration is via environment variables; no config file. Defaults work for single-machine use; only set what you need to override. | Env var | Default | Purpose | | -------------------- | -------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | `PORT` | `8787` | HTTP listen port. | | `GLYPH_HOST` | `127.0.0.1` | Bind address. glyph is **loopback-only** — non-loopback values are refused at startup. For remote access, expose the loopback socket through SSH port-forward, a reverse proxy (mTLS / OIDC), or a mesh VPN (Tailscale, …). | | `GLYPH_HOME` | `~/.glyph` | Where the global SQLite registry (`global.db`) lives. | | `GLYPH_LOG_LEVEL` | `info` | `trace` / `debug` / `info` / `warn` / `error` / `fatal` (pino's level set). | | `GLYPH_LOG_FORMAT` | `pretty` | `pretty` (dev terminal) or `json` (log aggregators). | | `GLYPH_STATIC_DIR` | next to bundle | Override the dashboard SPA location. Useful when running from a non-bundle layout. | Pass `--no-serve-static` to run API-only (the dashboard SPA is bundled in the npm package by default; serving it from the same port is the only deployment mode that makes sense for the local-first model). ## Filesystem contract Everything glyph writes under `` (default `~/.glyph`) and per-workspace internals is **server-internal state**. The layout — file names, JSON shapes, SQLite schemas, sidecar files — is implementation detail and may change between versions. Reading these files for inspection is fine; **anything else (writes, hand-edits, `rm`) is unsupported and may be detected as corruption.** For the path-by-path layout (what glyph owns vs the agent vs the runtime adapter) and the rationale for keeping clients out of `/`, see [`docs/architecture.md` → Filesystem contract](./docs/architecture.md#filesystem-contract). ## CLI After `npm install -g @glyphs-ai/glyph` the `glyph` binary exposes two layers of commands: ### Lifecycle (talk to the local process) | Command | Behaviour | | ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | `glyph` | Print top-level help (alias for `glyph help`). | | `glyph help [c]` | Top-level help, or per-subcommand help when `c` is given. | | `glyph serve` | Run the server in the foreground — current dev behaviour. Honours every env var in the *Configuration* table; flags override env. | | `glyph start` | Spawn the server as a detached background process. Records pid + port in `/runtime.json`. Idempotent. | | `glyph stop` | SIGTERM the recorded pid, wait for graceful shutdown (escalates to SIGKILL after 30 s), then delete `runtime.json`. Idempotent. *Windows note:* `process.kill` maps to `TerminateProcess` — there is no graceful equivalent on Windows; the server's atomic-write persistence keeps state consistent regardless. | | `glyph restart` | `stop` then `start` with the same flags. | | `glyph status` | Print one-line health summary. Exit codes: `0` running + healthy, `3` not running, `4` running but `/api/health` not responding. `--json` for scripts. | | `glyph logs` | Cat the rolling server log under `/logs/`. `-f` follows the file as it grows (Ctrl-C to stop). | ### API client (talk to a running server) Every command here calls the generated `@glyphs-ai/sdk` client — one typed operation per route, codegenned from the server's OpenAPI spec. The single source of truth is the set of `OpenAPIHono` route definitions in `packages/api/src/routes/` (each route is declared next to its request / response zod schemas); the server mounts them, and the SDK is regenerated from the resulting `/api/openapi.json`. A route that drifts from the generated client is caught by the OpenAPI snapshot test in CI. ```sh # server connection (default: http://127.0.0.1:8787, picked up from # `runtime.json` when `glyph start` has run) glyph health glyph config --json glyph runtime list # workspaces glyph workspace list glyph workspace add --name "Sandbox" --workspace-dir ~/code/sandbox export GLYPH_WORKSPACE= # required for workspace-scoped commands glyph workspace show glyph workspace rm --purge # sessions and tasks (workspace-scoped; pass --workspace-id to override the env above) glyph session new --agent writer glyph session list --agent writer --json glyph task dispatch --agent triage --brief "Scan recent issues" glyph task list --status running,succeeded glyph task activity # runtime-parsed activity timeline (JSON) # workflows (workspace-scoped DAG runs — the third mode alongside sessions and tasks) glyph workflow create --coord-agent official/coordinator --brief "Triage and fan out" glyph workflow list glyph workflow dag # full DAG snapshot: header + nodes + edges # catalog glyph catalog overview glyph catalog skill list glyph catalog skill install --file /abs/path/to/skill glyph catalog agent install --url https://github.com/glyphs-ai/glyph/tree/main/first-party/agents/engineer glyph catalog mcp install --url https://github.com/glyphs-ai/glyph/tree/main/first-party/mcps/io.playwright_mcp.json # schedules (workspace-scoped cron triggers) glyph schedule list glyph schedule create --name "Nightly scan" --agent triage --brief "Scan recent issues" --cron "0 3 * * *" --tz UTC ``` Common flags on every API command: - `--server ` — overrides `GLYPH_SERVER` and `runtime.json`. Defaults to `http://127.0.0.1:8787`. - `--workspace-id ` — workspace-scoped commands. Overrides `GLYPH_WORKSPACE` and the server's `currentWorkspace`. - `--output ` / `--json` — `table` (human-friendly default) or `json` (for scripting). Exit codes: `0` success, `1` generic error, `2` usage error, `3` server unreachable, `4` server returned a 4xx/5xx. ## Where this sits Glyph does not invent a new agent format — it adopts the [MetaAgents](https://github.com/metaagents-ai/metaagents) Layer-0 spec where agents are markdown files (`AGENTS.md`) with YAML frontmatter, skills are markdown files (`SKILL.md`) with YAML frontmatter, and MCPs are JSON config blobs. What glyph adds: - **A dependency-aware catalog** — agents declare which skills + MCPs they need; glyph topologically resolves them, blocks cycles, and refuses to uninstall something another entry depends on. - **A workspace abstraction** — multiple isolated projects on one machine; each picks its own agent set without polluting the others. - **Runtime adapters** — first-class support for the [GitHub Copilot CLI](https://github.com/github/copilot-cli) today; the same surface lets future runtimes (Gemini, Claude Code, …) drop in. - **Three execution modes** — interactive `session`, one-shot `task`, and multi-task `workflow` (a DAG of sessions and tasks coordinated by a long-running coordinator agent). All three persist across server restarts and share a structured `running → succeeded/failed/cancelled` lifecycle. ## Architecture Glyph is a pnpm monorepo with strict tier-based layering. The design contract — repository pattern, atomic-write seam, REST URL scheme, package boundaries — lives in [`docs/architecture.md`](./docs/architecture.md). The conceptual model behind why glyph is shaped this way lives in the paper [*What we believe about agentic systems*](docs/paradigm.md); it's a short read. ## First-party catalog The repo ships a [`first-party/`](./first-party/) subtree of agents and skills (scope `official`) that the project maintains in lock-step with the code — they depend on internals (catalog schema, CLI surface) tightly enough to version-bump and PR together with the packages that define those internals. See [`first-party/README.md`](./first-party/README.md) for the full list and install URLs. Third-party catalogs can be installed the same way as first-party entries (any reachable GitHub URL). ## Development See [`docs/CONTRIBUTING.md`](./docs/CONTRIBUTING.md) for the local setup, daily loop, and "adding things" pointer map. The release procedure lives in [`docs/RELEASING.md`](./docs/RELEASING.md). ## License MIT — see [LICENSE](./LICENSE). ## Source & license This open-source MCP server is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code. - **Author:** [glyphs-ai](https://github.com/glyphs-ai) - **Source:** [glyphs-ai/glyph](https://github.com/glyphs-ai/glyph) - **License:** MIT Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above. ## Pricing - **Free** — Free ## Security capabilities Automated source analysis of v0.1.0 — what this tool can access: - **Network access:** no - **Filesystem access:** no - **Shell / process execution:** no - **Environment & secrets:** no - **Dynamic code execution:** no *"Yes" means the capability is present in the source — more access means more to trust, not that it is unsafe.* ## Versions - **0.1.0** — security scan: passed — Imported from the upstream source. ## Links - Listing page: https://agentstack.voostack.com/l/mcp-glyphs-ai-glyph - Seller: https://agentstack.voostack.com/s/glyphs-ai - Browse the marketplace: https://agentstack.voostack.com/browse --- Listed on AgentStack — the marketplace for AI agent skills and MCP servers. Every listing is security-reviewed. Creators keep 70%.