Todox README
The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Todox listing page.
todox
Working memory for developers and their agents. Not a checklist — a log your next session can actually resume from.
An issue tracker is written human-to-human. todox is written agent-to-agent, with a human reading over its shoulder. Every task carries the decisions behind it, the approaches that failed, the questions still open, and the note the last session left behind.
A fresh agent calls get_context, reads that, and starts where the last one
stopped — without walking into a wall somebody already hit. The briefing is
capped rather than unbounded, in rows and in bytes, and it reports what the
caps left out instead of trimming in silence. Nothing is ever cut mid-sentence:
every record comes back named and dated with its first line, and a body of
null means the budget was spent, not that the record is empty.
What goes in a log
| kind | what it means |
|---|---|
decision | what you chose, and why the alternatives lost |
dead_end | an approach that did not work — the highest-value entry, because it stops the repeat |
question | something only a human can answer |
handoff | end-of-session state, written for a stranger |
note | everything else |
Two things fall out of treating the log as the product:
- Stale context is flagged, and never faked. Linked files are hashed by the
side that can see them — the agent — and the server stores the hashes and
compares. If the code moves on,
get_contextsays the note may be lying. Until an agent has actually looked, the note is marked as never checked rather than claimed to be fresh: context that lies is worse than none, and that includes lying about how sure we are. - Reports come from the log, not from commits. Every status change is an event, so what did I finish today, how long did it take, which model did it is a query rather than archaeology.
- A file can be asked what is known about it. The same links that carry the
hashes are readable from the other end:
get_file_contexttakes a path and answers with the tasks that touched it, their dead ends, and any standing note attached to it. Paths are folded to their repo-relative form, so a link made on one machine is found from another.
Try it
todox.dev — anyone can register. Small personal deployment, no uptime promise. Self-host if the log matters to you.
Run your own
Connect an agent
todox is a remote MCP server. There is nothing to install and no repository to clone: point any MCP client at the URL with an agent token.
Create a token on the Account page and it hands you text you can paste straight into whichever agent you use, plus the config snippet for the four common ones. The shape is always the same — one URL, one header:
The MCP config key and the
typevalue differ per agent, and the wrong combination is silently ignored — no error, no warning, the tool just does not show up:
agent key typeClaude Code mcpServers.NAME"http"OpenCode v1 mcp.NAME"remote"OpenCode v2 mcp.servers.NAME"remote"Cursor mcpServers.NAME"http"VS Code (Copilot Chat) servers.NAME"http"Codex TOML [mcp_servers.NAME]n/a
Where those files live differs by platform, and VS Code is the one that is not where a Linux habit puts it:
| agent | macOS | Linux | Windows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | ~/.claude.json | same | same |
| Cursor | ~/.cursor/mcp.json | same | same |
| Codex | ~/.codex/config.toml | same | same |
| OpenCode | ~/.config/opencode/opencode.json | same | same |
| VS Code | ~/Library/Application Support/Code/User/mcp.json | ~/.config/Code/User/mcp.json | %APPDATA%\Code\User\mcp.json |
Install it globally, not per project. Every one of these tools defaults to
the directory you are standing in — claude mcp add without a scope,
.cursor/mcp.json, .vscode/mcp.json — and a memory that only exists in one
repository is the opposite of the point. It also fails quietly: the tools
simply are not there in the next project, so the agent never mentions them.
Spell out "type": "http". A client that finds a url without one tends to
assume a local command and fails with something unhelpful.
Then tell your agent to use it
Connecting is not the same as being used, and the gap is bigger than it looks.
An MCP server's instructions are background reading; a skill or a CLAUDE.md
rule is an instruction. When they disagree, the server loses — measured, in a
fresh project, with todox connected the whole time and never once called.
So put four lines in the memory file your agent actually obeys:
Or let the installer do it:
It is off unless asked, because that file is yours rather than ours, and it is
idempotent — the block is fenced with an HTML comment, so a second run replaces
it instead of leaving two sets of instructions where the older one wins. Add
--dry-run to see the exact block first.
The user-level file, not the project one. This is the same trap as the config above, one directory over:
| Agent | The file that applies everywhere |
|---|---|
| Claude Code | ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md |
| Codex | ~/.codex/AGENTS.md |
| Cursor | ~/.cursor/rules/todox.md |
| VS Code | ~/.copilot/instructions/todox.md |
| OpenCode | ~/.config/opencode/AGENTS.md |
A repository's own AGENTS.md, and the per-project rules files the editors also
read, apply inside that checkout only. A cross-project memory installed into one
project is the thing this whole section exists to avoid.
The token stays out of that file — it lives in your MCP config. This is the habit, not the credential.
Optional: local mode
The hosted server has no filesystem — but your agent does, and that is enough:
it sends the hash when it links a file and calls report_file_hashes with what
it finds afterwards, so staleness works over HTTP like anywhere else.
The stdio server does that part itself rather than asking. Worth running if you would rather not spend an agent's attention on it, or want the hashing to happen even when the agent forgets. There is nothing to clone:
Or as an MCP config, which is the form an agent wants:
There is no npm package, and that is a decision rather than a to-do. A
GitHub Release needs no account and no token to publish or to install from, so
the tarball is the whole distribution and npx takes its URL directly. The URL
above always resolves to the newest release; every release also carries a
todox-mcp-<version>.tgz if you would rather pin and choose when to move.
It carries only what the stdio server actually loads — no Next, no React, no
Postgres driver, because it talks to the API over HTTP and never opens a
database. pnpm pack:mcp builds it, and fails the build if anything
server-side ever finds its way into the tool surface again.
From a clone, pnpm -C /path/to/todox mcp still works and is what to use when
you are changing the tools themselves.
Tools
| tool | what it does |
|---|---|
get_context | Call this first. Standing rules, project decisions and gotchas, every open task with its decisions, dead ends, questions, files and last handoff — plus stale-file warnings. Resolves a project from a slug, a name, or any path inside it. Capped in rows and in bytes, never truncated: every record keeps its id, kind, date and first line, and a body of null means the budget was spent — get_task reads it. Pass focus — a sentence about what the session is for — and both budgets are spent on the records that answer it rather than the newest ones, which is what lets them be smaller. |
create_task | Capture work. Pass cwd or an explicit project; the tool schema requires one before the call runs. Registering a new one also needs repo_root or repo_url. The receipt returns the task path and body length without echoing the body. |
update_task | Status, title, body, priority. Moving to doing/done is where durations come from. |
log_entry | Append one of the five kinds. answers_entry_id closes a question — the only thing that does. |
delete_entry | For an entry that was wrong when it was written. One overtaken by later work is history, not an error — append instead. |
activity_report | Today / this week / any window: durations, models, importance, decisions, dead ends, open questions. format:"markdown" is written to be pasted into a status update. |
link_files | Attach paths with their hashes to a task or a context note. Safe to call again for the same file. |
report_file_hashes | Hosted only: what the linked files look like on disk now. The local process does this for itself. |
accept_file_change · unlink_file | Clear a stale warning once you have read the change, or drop a link that has stopped meaning anything. Nothing else can clear it — the server never sees the file. |
add_context | Knowledge that outlives a task; omit the project to make it account-wide. |
get_context_note | One note in full, for the ones whose body the briefing capped and for reading past a search snippet. An entry the budget did not reach is read with get_task. |
get_file_context | What is known about one file: the tasks that touched it with their dead ends, and the notes attached to it. Absolute or repo-relative; both find a link made on another machine. |
update_context · delete_context | Correct a note that turned out wrong. A log that can only be added to stops being worth reading. |
search | Across all your projects, ranked by relevance. Ask the question in words; quote a phrase to require it. Stems English and Turkish, and still matches the middle of an identifier. Words that only one of the two languages treats as noise are dropped, so a question does not match every record containing the word "a". kinds narrows to dead ends or decisions; project stops it looking elsewhere. |
get_task | One task with its log and linked files. |
list_tasks · list_projects | The plain lists, when get_context is more than you need. Projects are newest-activity-first and carry activity_at. |
create_project · update_project | Rarely needed: create_task with a cwd registers one. A summary is worth adding. |
delete_project | The way back from a mistyped cwd. Takes the project and everything under it; confirm must be the slug. |
merge_projects | The way back from one repo registered twice. Moves tasks, notes and paths into the surviving project; confirm must be the slug of the one being merged away. |
Every write tool takes a model, and the server instructions tell the agent to
always pass it. That is what makes the per-model breakdown real rather than
guessed.
Prompts
Three, because there are three moments this is for. They show up in your client's own menu, so you can see what the server does without reading anything:
| prompt | when |
|---|---|
start_session | before planning — read what earlier sessions established |
wrap_up | before finishing — leave a handoff, and the dead ends especially |
standup | when somebody asks what got done |
Deploying
A container and a Postgres beside it. docker-compose.yml at the root is that,
assembled — the database publishes no port at all and is reachable only over
the compose network:
The migration is a separate line on purpose; see the note at the end of this section. todox.dev itself runs the same two containers on one host.
| variable | why |
|---|---|
DATABASE_URL | Postgres. When the database is a neighbour on the same network this is its service name, and no certificate or public port is involved. |
DATABASE_POOL_MAX | Optional, default 10. Connections this process may hold. Raise it only after checking the server's own max_connections, which every replica shares. |
TODOX_PUBLIC_URL | Verification links, reset links and the agent setup snippet are built from it — get it wrong and people, and their agents, land on the wrong host. |
SMTP_HOST · SMTP_USER · SMTP_PASS · MAIL_FROM (· SMTP_PORT) | Optional, but the first four together. Without them mail is printed to the server log rather than sent. Port defaults to 587 (STARTTLS). What MAIL_FROM may be depends on the provider: a mailbox provider usually wants the address that authenticated, while an API-key provider wants any address on a domain verified with it. If a sending limit is hit, messages are dropped and the failure shows up only in the log. |
Run pnpm db:migrate when the schema changes. It deliberately does not run at
startup: DDL racing between instances of a rolling deploy is a bad way to
discover lock contention, and the schema is idempotent precisely so the decision
can be made after a deploy rather than during one. From the host:
That is also why the image keeps its dev dependencies instead of using Next's
standalone output — pruning them removes tsx and everything under
scripts/, and a database that is deliberately unreachable from the internet
can only be migrated from something already inside the network.
Knowing it actually deployed
A merge is not a deploy, and the gap between them is silent: nothing errors, the site stays up, and the only symptom is that a fix you watched go green is not the one people are running. On 2026-09-05 this instance served code two days and fifty-six commits old, and the thing that made it visible was looking rather than anything reporting it.
The image tag is the git sha and the container name changes on every deploy, so one line answers it:
Compare that against git rev-parse origin/main. If they differ, the code you
are reading is not the code that is running.
Automatic deploys are worth wiring up, and worth checking after you do. A platform that pulls on a webhook can have the switch on and still never fire, because the switch and the webhook are two settings in two places: this instance had auto-deploy enabled for weeks while the repository had no webhook at all, so nothing was ever told to look. After wiring one, confirm from the sending side — the delivery log — rather than from the switch, because a webhook pointed at the wrong path answers cheerfully and does nothing.
Taking your data with you
The Account page has a Download my data button, and /api/export answers
the same file to a bearer token — so an agent can write the backup without the
result passing through a model. It carries every project you own with its
tasks, log, context notes and file hashes, and nothing about anybody else: no
credential, no collaborator, no share token, and no projects that were shared
with you, which belong to whoever made them.
Loading one into an instance you run:
Additive, never destructive: nothing is deleted or overwritten, and a project whose slug is taken arrives under the next free one. Task events come across too, so durations in a report on the restored copy say what they said on the original.
Coming from the old SQLite version? pnpm db:import-sqlite [path] copies a
~/.todox/todox.db across.
Security
Passwords are scrypt; sessions, agent tokens and email links are stored as hashes only. Ownership is enforced in one module, and a row belonging to someone else answers 404 rather than 403 so ids cannot be probed. Rate limits live in the database, so they hold across instances.
Details, and an honest list of what is not covered, in SECURITY.md.
Known gaps
- Search's full-text half is indexed; its substring half is not. The two are
asked separately and merged, which is what lets the first one use an index at
all — measured on 110k rows, a search went from 5.7s to 0.16s. What is left is
one sequential scan for the
ILIKEarm that finds identifiers full-text cannot, and indexing that needspg_trgm, which needs aCREATE EXTENSIONthis project cannot assume it is allowed to run. - Staleness is per-file hash; per-symbol would be the honest version. Hosted, it depends on the agent actually sending hashes — the instructions ask, and nothing can make it.
- Coverage sits around 39%, and the shape matters more than the number: the agent surface, the auth boundary and the repositories that answer "is this yours" are covered, while much of the UI is not.
- Observations only see what git can tell them, so they answer "what changed" and never "why". The half that carries reasoning is a transcript, and the only hook API that exposes one belongs to a single client.
- The briefing's byte budget covers log bodies and note bodies. Two axes are
still bounded only by a row count: the heads of carried entries (fifty
tasks' worth), and task bodies. Both are far smaller than what the budget
fixed — one project went from 143 KB to about 55 KB — but neither is bounded
in bytes, and
pnpm bench:memoryprints both so the next reader does not have to discover it. - Observations are captured by the local process only. Watching git means
running on the machine that holds the checkout, and the hosted endpoint has
none — so connected that way, the
observationssection of every briefing stays empty and nothing anywhere fills it. The Try-it path in this README is the hosted one, so that is most people.npx todox-mcpis the transport that captures. Everything else works identically either way. - No 2FA, no per-session revocation, no audit log.
- Share links are unlisted, not access-controlled.
- No keyboard navigation beyond
/for search.
Cutting a release
That is the procedure. The workflow checks the tag against package.json,
runs the checks, builds the stdio package and attaches it to a GitHub Release —
no account and no credential involved, so npx <that tarball url> works from
the first tag.
Two names go up: todox-mcp-<version>.tgz, and the same bytes as
todox-mcp.tgz so that /releases/latest/download/todox-mcp.tgz is an address
worth writing into a config once. Nothing is published to npm, on purpose — see
the local-mode section above.
server.json pins the MCP registry entry to the same version and
server-json.test.ts holds it there, so the tag, the package and the registry
move together or the release stops.
Contributing
The rules the codebase actually follows, and how to run the checks: CONTRIBUTING.md.
MIT — see LICENSE.