Your agents, explained
to the people they work for.

Staves maps how people, AI agents and software work together: who does what, what passes between them, and where a person decides.

Open source. Your coding agent reads your code and draws the board, and the people in the work check it.

Local setup guide

Or use the hosted workspace: request access to the private beta.

See how Staves works1 / 6

People and agents.
One picture of the work.

Staves is a visual workspace for workflow mapping across people, AI agents, and software. See who does what, what passes between them, and where a person needs to decide.

Building a Staves board Three tracks show how work passes between people and an agent. A product lead defines the need. A research agent compares options using that brief. A review team uses the comparison to choose a direction. Product leadHumanDefine the needAn agreed briefThe briefResearch agentAgentCompare optionsEvidence for the teamA comparisonReview teamHumanChoose a directionA decision with an owner

From the work to the code.

Work with Codex or Claude Code through MCP and Staves skills. Link Langfuse traces to connect the work you designed with evidence from real runs.

Written in an open format.

Every board is a Staves document: who does what, what passes between them, where a person decides, and where each fact came from. The draft format can record competing claims when the code and the people disagree. The current tools show a dispute as an open question; competing claims do not yet round-trip.

The format is versioned on its own and free to use in any tool.

Read the formatJSON Schema

{
  "id": "refund",
  "name": "Issue the refund",
  "track": "agent-triage",
  "disputes": [{
    "field": "gate",
    "claims": [
      { "value": null,
        "source": { "method": "code",
                    "ref": "git:4be1c2e:src/refund.ts" } },
      { "value": {
          "rule": "every refund is checked by a person",
          "accountable": "support-lead" },
        "source": { "method": "interview",
                    "by": "role:support-lead" } }
    ]
  }]
}

Questions about Staves.

What is Staves?

Staves helps you map and design how work happens. A board connects the people, AI agents, and systems involved with their jobs, the information they exchange, and the decisions they need to make. Read what Staves is for.

Who is Staves for?

Staves is for product teams, service designers, and developers designing a new workflow or improving an existing one. Start with one outcome: onboarding a customer, reviewing a proposal, or deciding where an AI agent can help.

How is Staves different from a flowchart?

A Staves board describes work through responsibilities, jobs, and handoffs. You can examine what each role needs, what it produces, and where a human decision belongs. Connected coding agents can help build and review that same account of the work. Learn how to read a board.

Does Staves run my AI agents?

Staves is a workspace for designing and reviewing the work. Drawing an agent track does not run an agent or deploy a workflow. Use your connected coding agent to investigate an implementation and help turn a design into software.

Can I use Staves with Codex or Claude Code?

Yes. Staves provides MCP tools and skills for working with coding agents, including Codex and Claude Code. Your agent can help describe a workflow and update the board. See how to connect your agent.

What does the Langfuse integration do?

It links selected execution evidence from Langfuse to jobs on a Staves board. This helps you compare the intended work with observations from real runs. You can also design a workflow without Langfuse. Read about Langfuse evidence.

How do I get beta access?

Request access with your email and, optionally, a short description of the workflow you want to explore. Access is by invitation during the closed beta. Guided AI conversations and reviews in the hosted app require your own OpenAI, Anthropic, or Gemini API key.

Is Staves open source?

Yes. The tools and format are open source under Apache-2.0. Read the source on GitHub. The format is v0.1, draft for comment; breaking changes are expected before 1.0. Hosted accounts and service operations remain private.

What is the Staves format?

An open format for work shared by people, agents and systems: who does what, what passes between them, where a person decides, and how we know. Each fact on a board records its source, such as an interview, the code or an execution trace. The draft specification supports competing claims. The current tools show disputes as open questions and do not yet preserve those claims on a round trip.

Use it hosted.

A shared workspace for teams, in private beta. The open tools work without it.

Already invited? Sign in, then run npx @staves/cli connect in your project.