KARIMO is an open-source harness and plugin for Claude Code, designed to automate and enhance the software development lifecycle. It provides product design-driven agent orchestration, enabling developers and designers to ship features more efficiently by automating processes from PRD execution to code review and CI integration. The system aims to streamline development by acting as an intelligent coordination layer for autonomous agents.

How It Works

KARIMO builds upon Claude Code's foundational APIs by adding a custom orchestration layer. It guides development through a structured, phased workflow: Research, Plan, Tasks, Review, Orchestrate, and Inspect. This approach leverages sub-agents and agent teams, employing wave-ordered parallelism and complexity routing for model execution. Its novelty lies in providing essential coordination features such as managing task dependencies, detecting and resolving stuck loops, and recovering from crashes, which are not natively present in Claude Code.

Quick Start & Requirements

Installation is recommended via the Claude Code marketplace (/plugin marketplace add opensesh/KARIMO, /plugin install karimo@karimo, /reload-plugins). A legacy install script is also available. Prerequisites include Claude Code, GitHub CLI (gh auth login), and Git 2.5+. An interactive demo is available for understanding its functionality.

Highlighted Details

• Provides custom orchestration over Claude Code, adding branch identity verification, wave-ordered parallelism, complexity routing, Git state reconciliation, and semantic loop detection.
• Supports phased adoption: Phase 1 focuses on PRD interviews and agent execution; Phase 2 introduces automated review (e.g., Greptile, Claude Code Review); Phase 3 offers a CLI dashboard with velocity metrics.
• Highly configurable aspects include review gates, branch strategies, model routing, agent skills, research tools, and templates via /karimo:configure or .karimo/config.yaml.

Maintenance & Community

Developed by Open Session, KARIMO is currently "in review" for the official Claude Code marketplace. Direct contact for support or inquiries is available at hello@opensession.co. Specific community channels or roadmap details were not detailed in the provided README.

Licensing & Compatibility

KARIMO is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. This license is permissive and generally compatible with commercial use and linking within closed-source projects.

Limitations & Caveats

The project is dependent on the Claude Code environment. Running multiple orchestration sessions concurrently may lead to conflicts, with a recommendation to complete one session before initiating another. Automated review is optional and can be substituted with manual processes; third-party integrations like Greptile incur additional costs.