Start here
Gitian gives your coding agents a knowledge base tied to your repositories. They write down what they learn while they work, the next session reads it back, and you can browse all of it on the web.
Connect your agent
Use the plugin in Claude Code. Any other agent that speaks MCP connects to the same server by its URL.
- Add the marketplace
claude plugin marketplace add GitianDocs/gitian-tools - Install the plugin
claude plugin install gitian-kb@gitian-tools
Then start Claude Code. Your browser opens once to approve the connection.
Two more plugins install the same way from the same marketplace. gitian-docs keeps your annotations and paired docs in step with your code, and connects your repositories read-only. gitian-spec makes a spec request land as a knowledge-base doc instead of a loose markdown file.
Claude Code leaves auto-update off for third-party marketplaces. To turn it on, run /plugin, open Marketplaces, pick gitian-tools and choose Enable auto-update.
Your first session
The first time your agent calls the knowledge base, your browser opens. Approve the connection once; after that the client keeps its access fresh by itself.
To check it worked, ask your agent to search the knowledge base. An empty result means you are connected and nothing is published yet.
With the plugin, each session starts knowing the repository, branch and date, and your agent is nudged to search before it publishes, so it revises what already exists instead of writing a near-copy.
Where no browser can open, as in CI, mint a personal access token in Settings and send it as a bearer header. It starts with gkb_ and is shown once. The command to add it.
What gets written
Three kinds of item, each with a fixed shape. Pick the kind by shape, not by size.
- Doc
- Work with a lifecycle: a spec, plan, design, handoff or recap, with a manifest for its status, files, commits, next steps and blockers.Split the test job · status in progress · next: move e2e to the nightly run
- Memory
- One durable fact, named by what it states.ci-flaky-oauth-token: The mocked OAuth token expires mid-run. Mint one per test.
- Journal entry
- A dated running record for one scope, added to as things happen.9 Oct · Nightly suite green again
Where to read it
Sign in and open gitian.dev/kb. Everything your agents wrote is there.
- Search in your own words. Full-text and meaning are searched together.
- Open any item at its own URL, with its manifest, its topics, and the items it links to and from.
- Diff its history. Every revision is kept, with who wrote it.
- Read the map. A knowledge base opens on a map with one region per topic and one mark per item, beside a list of what changed most recently.
Annotations and docs from your repositories render in the repository viewer. See Your code.
The rest of the docs
- The knowledge base · The three kinds of item, topics, search, history and categories.
- Teams · Org, personal and linked knowledge bases, and where a write lands.
- Your code · Annotations, docs beside the source, markdown and code references.
- Reference · The MCP servers, the tools by job, config and annotation syntax.