CODA — Claude Orchestrated Development Agent

An AI-driven CLI that orchestrates the full feature development lifecycle: analyze → plan → implement → review → PR.

What is CODA?

CODA orchestrates feature development using Claude AI. You describe a feature, CODA plans it interactively via a TUI, then executes the full development cycle — coding, reviewing, verifying, and opening a pull request — autonomously.

Each feature gets an isolated git worktree and branch. Execution proceeds through dynamic development phases (derived from the design spec), followed by fixed review and verify phases. State is persisted to state.yml so interrupted runs can resume from the last completed phase.

CODA turns a feature description into a reviewed, tested pull request with minimal human intervention. It supports parallel features via worktrees, cost tracking per phase, and configurable quality checks.

Prerequisites

Installation

Build from source:

git clone https://github.com/tyrchen/coda.git
cd coda
cargo build --release

The binary is at target/release/coda. Add it to your PATH or create a symlink.

Alternatively, install directly:

cargo install --path apps/coda-cli

Verify the installation:

coda --help

Quick Start

Walk through a complete feature lifecycle using a realistic example.

Step 1: Initialize the project

coda init

Initializing CODA in /path/to/your/repo...
CODA project initialized successfully!
  Created .coda/ directory with config.yml
  Created .trees/ directory for worktrees
  Generated .coda.md repository overview

Next step: run `coda plan <feature-slug>` to start planning a feature.

This analyzes your repo structure via Claude, creates .coda/config.yml, .coda.md, and the .trees/ directory.

Step 2: Plan the feature

coda plan add-user-auth

This opens an interactive TUI for a multi-turn planning conversation with the Planner agent. Describe your feature, iterate on the design, and type /done to finalize.

Planning complete!
  Design spec: /path/to/repo/.trees/add-user-auth/.coda/add-user-auth/specs/design.md
  Verification: /path/to/repo/.trees/add-user-auth/.coda/add-user-auth/specs/verification.md
  State: /path/to/repo/.trees/add-user-auth/.coda/add-user-auth/state.yml
  Worktree: /path/to/repo/.trees/add-user-auth

Next step: run `coda run add-user-auth` to execute the plan.

Step 3: Execute the plan

coda run add-user-auth

  CODA Run: add-user-auth
  ═══════════════════════════════════════

  Phases: auth-types → auth-middleware → review → verify → PR

  [▸] auth-types              Running...  (1/4)
  [✓] auth-types              5m 12s    3 turns  $0.1200
  [▸] auth-middleware          Running...  (2/4)
  [✓] auth-middleware          12m 03s   12 turns  $1.8500
  [▸] review                  Running...  (3/4)
  [✓] review                  3m 45s    5 turns  $0.5200
  [▸] verify                  Running...  (4/4)
  [✓] verify                  2m 30s    4 turns  $0.3800
  [▸] create-pr              Running...
  [✓] create-pr              PR: https://github.com/org/repo/pull/42

  ─────────────────────────────────────
  Total: 23m 30s elapsed, 24 turns, $2.8700 USD
  ═══════════════════════════════════════

Step 4: List features

coda list

  Feature                      Status         Branch                          Turns     Cost
  ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  add-user-auth                ● completed    feature/add-user-auth              24   $2.8700

  1 feature(s) total

Step 5: Check detailed status

coda status add-user-auth

  Feature: add-user-auth
  ═══════════════════════════════════════

  Status:     ● completed
  Created:    2026-02-18 10:00:00 UTC
  Updated:    2026-02-18 10:24:00 UTC

  Git
  ─────────────────────────────────────
  Branch:     feature/add-user-auth
  Base:       main
  Worktree:   .trees/add-user-auth

  Phases
  ─────────────────────────────────────
  Phase        Status          Turns     Cost   Duration
  auth-types   ● completed         3   $0.1200    5m 12s
  auth-middl…  ● completed        12   $1.8500   12m 03s
  review       ● completed         5   $0.5200    3m 45s
  verify       ● completed         4   $0.3800    2m 30s

  Pull Request
  ─────────────────────────────────────
  #42: Add user authentication
  URL: https://github.com/org/repo/pull/42

  Summary
  ─────────────────────────────────────
  Total turns:    24
  Total cost:     $2.8700 USD
  Total duration: 23m 30s
  Tokens:         150000 in / 45000 out
  ═══════════════════════════════════════

Step 6: Clean up merged worktrees

coda clean

  Scanning worktrees for merged/closed PRs...

  [~] add-user-auth              merged    (PR #42)

  Remove 1 worktree(s)? [y/N] y

  [✓] Removed add-user-auth              merged    (PR #42)

  Cleaned 1 worktree(s).

Use --dry-run to preview what would be removed, or --yes / -y to skip the confirmation prompt.

CLI Reference

Feature slug rules:

• Lowercase ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens only
• Must not start or end with a hyphen
• No consecutive hyphens
• Maximum 64 characters

Configuration

Location: .coda/config.yml (created by coda init).

version: 1

agent:
  model: "claude-opus-4-6"       # Claude model to use
  max_budget_usd: 20.0           # Max spend per `coda run`
  max_retries: 3                 # Retries per phase on failure
  max_turns: 100                 # Max agent turns per phase

checks:                          # Commands run after each phase
  - "cargo build"
  - "cargo +nightly fmt -- --check"
  - "cargo clippy -- -D warnings"

prompts:
  extra_dirs:                    # Custom prompt template dirs
    - ".coda/prompts"

git:
  auto_commit: true              # Commit after each phase
  branch_prefix: "feature"       # Branch: feature/<slug>
  base_branch: "auto"            # Auto-detect default branch

review:
  enabled: true                  # Enable code review phase
  max_review_rounds: 5           # Max review iterations

All fields have sensible defaults. A minimal config can be as simple as:

version: 1

How It Works

coda init analyzes the repository and generates a project overview. coda plan opens an interactive design session where you collaborate with Claude to produce a design spec and verification plan. coda run executes the development phases, runs configurable quality checks between phases, performs code review, verifies the result, and opens a pull request.

Each feature runs in an isolated git worktree. State is tracked in state.yml for crash recovery — if a run is interrupted, re-running coda run resumes from the last completed phase. Cost is tracked per phase and displayed in real time.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                   coda-cli (app)                    │
│  Ratatui TUI · Clap CLI · Line Editor · App Driver  │
└──────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┘
                       │
┌──────────────────────▼──────────────────────────────┐
│                  coda-core (lib)                    │
│  Engine · Planner · Runner · Reviewer               │
│  FeatureScanner · GitOps · GhOps (traits)           │
└──────────┬───────────────────────┬──────────────────┘
           │                       │
┌──────────▼──────────┐  ┌─────────▼──────────────────┐
│    coda-pm (lib)    │  │  claude-agent-sdk-rs        │
│  Prompt Manager     │  │  Claude AI client           │
│  MiniJinja templates│  │  Streaming, hooks, MCP      │
└─────────────────────┘  └────────────────────────────┘

See .coda.md for the full repository overview.

Development

Build and test

cargo build                              # Build all crates
cargo +nightly fmt                       # Format (requires nightly)
cargo clippy -- -D warnings              # Lint
cargo test                               # Run tests
cargo nextest run                        # Run tests (nextest)
cargo deny check                         # License/dependency policy
cargo audit                              # Security audit

Workspace structure

See CLAUDE.md for coding conventions and development guidelines.

License

This project is distributed under the terms of MIT.

See LICENSE for details.

Copyright 2025 Tyr Chen