Is Smoke Monkey an AI model?

No. Smoke Monkey is not an LLM. It is an embeddable, framework-agnostic runtime that turns LLMs (NVIDIA, Gemini, OpenAI, Claude, Ollama) into autonomous engineering agents capable of multi-step planning, calling tools, editing files, and running test loops with zero runtime dependencies.

Do I need a database (Postgres, SQLite, or Redis)?

No database is required. State is persisted through lean session files on disk, or you can plug in your own custom storage adapter. You can deploy it as a CLI, a desktop app, or inside a serverless function without provisioning a database.

How does human-in-the-loop permission gating work?

Smoke Monkey comes with three permission policies: allow-all, deny-all, and ask-default (or a custom function resolver). When a sensitive tool like edit_file or run_command is called under "ask", the runtime emits a permission.required event, pausing execution until your code or UI calls agent.resolvePermission(id, "allow" | "deny").

How does the Model Context Protocol (MCP) server work?

Smoke Monkey ships an official stdio MCP server in smoke-monkey-harness-mcp. Point Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or opencode at it using npx -y smoke-monkey-harness-mcp to let other AI tools plan, scaffold, verify, and run agents using Smoke Monkey automatically.

What are SKILL.md skills and how do they prevent context bloat?

Skills are directories containing a SKILL.md workflow file. The system prompt only includes a one-line catalog of available skills. When a task requires specialized expertise (e.g. frontend-ui-engineering, test-driven-development, or security-hardening), the agent calls use_skill to load instructions just-in-time, saving thousands of tokens.

What is an AI Agent Harness?

An AI agent harness is the execution environment that bridges raw Large Language Models (LLMs) to real-world software engineering capabilities. While an LLM generates tokens, an AI harness manages deterministic phase loops (explore, plan, edit, verify, recover), tool execution sandboxing, token budget compaction, and safety gates needed for autonomous problem-solving.

What makes Smoke Monkey an Agentic AI runtime rather than a simple wrapper?

Unlike basic prompt-response chains, Smoke Monkey implements true agentic AI architecture: a deterministic 6-phase state machine with automatic failure recovery, runaway loop guards, 24 built-in developer tools, dynamic subcontext isolation, and interactive human-in-the-loop permission pauses.

Is Smoke Monkey Harness 100% Open Source AI?

Yes. Smoke Monkey Harness is 100% open source under the permissive MIT license with zero runtime dependencies. There is no telemetry lock-in, no mandatory cloud backend, and no database requirement—giving engineering teams complete sovereignty over their agent code.

What Agent APIs does Smoke Monkey Harness provide?

Smoke Monkey provides composable TypeScript Agent APIs: createAgent() for initialization, agent.run() for multi-turn execution, agent.on() for fine-grained lifecycle and streaming events, agent.resolvePermission() for interactive human authorization, subcontext switching APIs, and stdio Model Context Protocol (MCP) server endpoints.

Can I run completely offline without API keys?

Yes! Smoke Monkey natively supports Ollama out of the box. Set provider: "ollama" and model: "qwen3:8b" with workspacePath, and the agent will run locally on your machine with zero external network requests.

Git & VCS

7 min readUpdated: October 2026

AI Agent Git Workflows: Auto-Commit, Branch Creation & PR Generation

Technical Review: Smoke Monkey Core Architecture Team

|Tested on Node.js 18+ & Bun|TypeScript 5.x

Quick Answer & Executive Definition

AI Agent Git Workflows: Auto-Commit, Branch Creation & PR Generation: Designed as a zero-dependency, open-source TypeScript architecture under the MIT License with native Model Context Protocol (MCP) support and deterministic phase state machines.

Key Architectural Takeaways

Auto-generate semantic commit messages from git diff context
Create feature branches and push changes without manual git commands
Generate rich PR descriptions with context, test coverage, and risk assessment
Detect and resolve simple merge conflicts autonomously

A Complete Git-Aware Agent Workflow

This workflow creates a branch, makes changes, commits with a meaningful message, and outputs a PR body:

git-agent.tstypescript

1import { createAgent } from 'smoke-monkey-harness';
2
3const agent = createAgent({
4  provider: 'anthropic',
5  model: 'claude-3-7-sonnet',
6  workspacePath: process.cwd(),
7  autoApprove: true,
8});
9
10await agent.run(`
11  1. Create a new git branch: git checkout -b refactor/auth-async-await
12  2. Refactor all Promise.then() chains in src/auth/ to use async/await.
13  3. Run npx tsc --noEmit to validate no type errors were introduced.
14  4. Run npm test -- --testPathPattern=auth to confirm tests pass.
15  5. Stage all changes: git add -A
16  6. Write a semantic commit message summarizing the changes and commit.
17  7. Output a markdown PR description with: Summary, Changes Made, Test Coverage, and Risk Level.
18`);

Generating Semantic Commit Messages

Instruct the agent to follow the Conventional Commits specification for all commits it creates. This ensures commit history is machine-parseable for changelog generation and semantic versioning:

feat(auth): migrate Promise chains to async/await
fix(payments): handle race condition in concurrent charge requests
refactor(notifications): extract sendEmail into shared utility
test(auth): add missing edge case tests for token refresh

The agent reads the actual diff and generates the appropriate type prefix, scope, and description automatically.

Google Search Questions & Answers

Frequently Asked Questions

Q:Can Smoke Monkey push branches to remote GitHub repositories?

Yes, via git push in the run_command tool. Ensure the workspace has GitHub credentials configured (SSH key or GitHub CLI token) and set run_command permission to auto for CI environments.

Q:How do I prevent the agent from committing to the main branch accidentally?

Instruct the agent to always create a new branch before making changes. Add a pre-commit hook that blocks commits directly to main/master as a safety net.

Related Alternatives & Comparisons

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Open Source Devin Alternative: Build Autonomous Software Engineers in TypeScript

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vs Cursor Composer

Cursor Composer Agent Alternative: Embeddable Code Editing Engine

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vs Anthropic Claude Code

Claude Code Runtime Alternative: Open Source Stdio MCP Agent Harness

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Build with Smoke Monkey Harness

Zero dependencies. 24 built-in tools. Human-in-the-loop safety. 100% open source under the MIT License.

npm install smoke-monkey-harness