Steer AI coding agents
before they make a mess.
A local-first CLI with plugins for Claude Code and Codex that coaches engineers and non-technical builders through a disciplined workflow — Research, Propose, Plan, Implement, Test — and meters what every session actually costs.
“Like a calm senior engineer sitting next to you in the terminal.”
What breaks agents
Everything your team works around is something that breaks an agent. Took audits your repo for exactly these gaps and frames every finding as a fixable thing.
$ took ready — runs an agent-readiness audit on your repo and produces a prioritised fix list. Free, local, no account needed.
The workflow loop
Research → Propose → Plan → Implement → Test. The six-step discipline that turns vague prompts into production-grade, verifiable code — and coaches you through every stage. Built on the foundation laid by Mihail Eric at The Modern Software.
Produce the document the agent plans from. No research → no plan → slop.
Force alternatives. Only one solution considered is a red flag.
A reviewable spec with a verifiable done. The agent's contract.
Externalise progress on large tasks. Protect the context budget.
Favour automatic verification. Missing tests = untrusted code.
Pipp Health only. HIPAA/SOC2/HITRUST gate after Test.
Before the agent touches code, you (or Took) generate a research artifact: current API docs, existing patterns, affected files. Without it the agent hallucinates.
Took coaches you to produce at least two or three approaches with trade-offs before committing. Alternatives prevent tunnel vision and surface risk early.
A plan document scopes the diff before it happens: files in scope, files off-limits, acceptance criteria. Took checks the agent stays inside the lines.
Took guards each tool call — scope blowouts, dangerous commands, near-dumb-zone context warnings. Large tasks checkpoint progress to artifacts so nothing is lost to compaction.
Took's diff check catches missing test coverage and flags risky untested diffs. PR readiness scores tests as a first-class signal.
In regulated mode, a sixth gate runs compliance checklists against the diff. Loop Implement → Test → Secure until clean. A green diff never auto-passes what code can't prove.
Two-axis governor
Over-coaching is a failure mode too. Took scales how closely it watches to the task and the operator — so a one-line fix never gets the full loop, and a healthcare migration never skips the Secure gate.
Rigor ↔ Task Size
A one-line fix gets a light touch. A cross-service migration gets the full loop. Took never over-coaches trivia or under-coaches complexity.
Protection ↔ Operator
Engineers get Took in Coach mode. Non-technical builders default to Guard/Strict. Regulated teams get the Secure gate. Right-sized, not maximum.
Know what your agents cost — without the marketing math
Took meters every session from the agent's own transcript and refuses to flatter you: costs are list-price equivalents, savings carry a named basis, and what Took caught is counted — never priced. No causal ROI claims, ever.
The cost ledger
Real tokens and dollars per session, read from the agent’s own transcript — never estimated from prompt counts. Cost per task and per type via the git-native task graph, plus context pressure against the smart window. Figures are list-price equivalents, not billing claims.
Savings, with a named basis
Recall reports tokens avoided versus dumping the matched files; the cartridge reports a per-session estimate against its build baseline. Both are labeled estimates — never billing claims. Prompt-cache savings are credited to your provider’s caching, not to Took.
What Took caught
Blocks, warns, corrections, right-sizing, compactions — counted, never priced. There is no honest counterfactual for a blocked operation, so Took refuses to invent one.
The learning curve
took learn charts corrections, right-sized prompts, and waste week over week — computed from your own local event log, so you can see the habit change, not just be told about it.
Recall
took recallPull only the symbols a task needs — a zero-dependency structural map serves budget-fit context slices instead of whole files.
Cartridge
took cartridgeFreeze repo knowledge into a slim, source-grounded artifact — faithfulness-gated, with a labeled per-session savings estimate.
Task graph
took taskA git-native task graph with commit-trailer lineage — the thing that turns raw spend into cost per task.
The dashboard — app.tookbot.com
Log in and sync to see the same ledger in the browser: an overview, the /cost ledger, and /learn trends — plus readiness, weekly reports, badges, and your profile. Sync is opt-in and privacy-tiered: derived metrics only — never code, prompts, or diffs.
One coach, three layers
Took is free for engineers. Pipp extends it for builders who want to understand what they're managing. Pipp Health adds regulated-industry compliance for healthcare teams.
Took
Engineer CoreSteer AI coding agents before they make a mess.
- ✓Workflow coaching
- ✓Pre-tool guard + diff review
- ✓Agent-readiness audit
- ✓Docs & playbook drift check
- ✓PR readiness score
- ✓Local XP, cost & learning ledgers
Pipp
Education LayerBuild with AI and actually understand what's happening.
- ✓Plain-English narration of every agent action
- ✓Leveled, cited learning resources
- ✓Heightened scanning & guardrails
- ✓Concept tracking — stops re-explaining
- ✓Learning XP + profile
- ✓Free taste: took explain works for everyone
Pipp Health
Regulated Add-onShip healthcare software with compliance checks built into the workflow.
- ✓Secure phase
- ✓HIPAA / SOC 2 / HITRUST assessment
- ✓PHI/PII standing scan
- ✓Code-verifiable vs org controls
- ✓Retained compliance audit trail
- ✓Composable with Pipp
Install in your agent
Took ships as a Claude Code plugin — and a Codex CLI plugin from the same repo — hooking five agent events to coach without interrupting your flow.
Running Codex CLI instead? The Codex install guide →
Plus took statusline — one quiet line of prompt right-sizing + XP in your Claude Code status bar.
Judgment rewarded, not tokens burned
Took XP rewards quality, judgment, and learning — never prompt count, diff size, or token volume. Right-sizing a task earns a Judgment bonus. Running the full loop when it was warranted earns Research, Plan, and Test XP.
Anti-gaming: per-category daily caps, evidence required (real artifacts, tests, surviving PRs), and improvement deltas rewarded over absolutes — so messy starters are rewarded for growth.
Generated a research doc before prompting
Scoped the diff with a verifiable done
Prevented a dangerous out-of-scope edit
All changed files have test coverage
Right-sized a trivial task, skipped loop
Mastered a new concept via Pipp
Start steering your agents.
Free local CLI. No account. No cloud. No surveillance. Just a calm senior engineer in your terminal — run took start for the 60-second tour.