Chief is an AI-powered development tool designed to help users build large software projects using Claude. It addresses the challenge of managing complex codebases with AI by breaking down work into discrete tasks and orchestrating Claude Code through an iterative loop. This enables developers to leverage large language models for substantial projects without being constrained by context window limitations.

How It Works

The project employs a "Ralph Wiggum loop" pattern where Claude Code processes tasks sequentially. Each iteration begins with a fresh context window, but crucial progress is persisted between runs, allowing Claude to maintain continuity across extensive development cycles. The system breaks down the overall project into manageable tasks, executing one task per iteration, and crucially, creating a single Git commit for each completed task. This ensures a clean, reviewable commit history.

Quick Start & Requirements

• Installation: Install via Homebrew (brew install minicodemonkey/chief/chief) or use the provided install script (curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MiniCodeMonkey/chief/refs/heads/main/install.sh | sh).
• Usage: Create a new project with chief new. Launch the Text User Interface (TUI) and press 's' to start the build process.
• Prerequisites: Requires the Claude Code CLI to be installed and authenticated.

Highlighted Details

• Facilitates building large projects by managing AI iterations without hitting context limits.
• Ensures a clean Git history with one commit generated per completed task.
• Utilizes the "Ralph Wiggum loop" pattern for persistent AI progress across fresh context windows.

Maintenance & Community

No specific details regarding maintainers, community channels, or roadmap were provided in the README snippet.

Licensing & Compatibility

The project is licensed under the MIT License. No specific compatibility notes for commercial use or closed-source linking were mentioned.

Limitations & Caveats

No explicit limitations, alpha/beta status, or known issues were detailed in the provided README.