Gensee Crate

Full-stack, long-horizon runtime safety for AI coding agents.

Gensee Crate watches system events, user requests, agent tool calls, skills and memory behind unmodified coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, Cursor, and Omnigent. It follows long-horizon agent behavior across requests and sessions and runs as a low-latency sidecar beside the agents on native hosts like macOS and Linux. Real-time enforcement combines agent-interface decisions with Linux syscall, network, and sensitive-file controls. Offline event tracking, lineage, and provenance can be viewed in a native desktop dashboard and command line.

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Why Gensee Crate?

Gensee Crate helps you:

• Watch what your agent actually does. Capture files read and written, commands run, network targets reached, hook intent, alerts, and timeline context in one local store.
• Enforce policy before risky tools run. Enforces a deterministic, configurable policy that can allow, ask, or deny secret reads, destructive ops, out-of-workspace writes, cloud-metadata access, control-plane writes, dangerous executable content, and more.
• Trace provenance across sessions. Lineage graphs link prompts, tool calls, filesystem effects, artifacts, alerts, and review verdicts so long-horizon safety issues such as memory poisoning and data exfiltration can be prevented in time and examined afterward.
• Seamless integration with your current workflow. Run gensee watch beside an agent or launch an agent in a sandbox with gensee run with additional safety. Manage policy with gensee policy and inspect activity in the local dashboard.

Preliminary Benchmark Results

Preliminary AgentCanary benchmark results show Gensee Crate improving defense rate across memory poisoning, long-horizon, and prompt-injection threat types with low runtime overhead.

Quick start

1. Install

One command installs Gensee Crate and checks or installs its command-line prerequisites on macOS. At the end, the installer can configure supported agent hooks for active safety policy enforcement, lets you choose GENSEE_HOME, and lets you keep the bundled default policy or create an editable local policy:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GenseeAI/gensee-crate/main/scripts/install_oss.sh | bash

During an interactive install, choose the native dashboard prompt to provision its Tauri and frontend dependencies. For a non-interactive install, add GENSEE_CONFIGURE_DASHBOARD=1. This requires Node.js 18+; on Linux it also installs the WebKitGTK development packages required by Tauri.

For non-interactive installs that should configure Claude Code, Codex, and Antigravity hooks:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GenseeAI/gensee-crate/main/scripts/install_oss.sh | GENSEE_CONFIGURE_CLAUDE=1 GENSEE_CONFIGURE_CODEX=1 GENSEE_CONFIGURE_ANTIGRAVITY=1 GENSEE_CONFIGURE_DASHBOARD=1 bash

To configure VS Code / GitHub Copilot hooks instead, use the VS Code toggle. Avoid enabling both Claude Code and VS Code hooks for the same VS Code sessions, because VS Code also loads Claude-compatible hook settings:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GenseeAI/gensee-crate/main/scripts/install_oss.sh | GENSEE_CONFIGURE_VSCODE=1 bash

Prefer to install manually?

Install platform prerequisites first.

On macOS:

xcode-select --install

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh -s -- -y
source "$HOME/.cargo/env"

brew install jq

On Ubuntu/Debian Linux:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y build-essential pkg-config libssl-dev jq nftables git

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh -s -- -y
source "$HOME/.cargo/env"

Build the CLI from source:

git clone https://github.com/GenseeAI/gensee-crate.git
cd gensee-crate
cargo build -p gensee-crate-cli

The binary is now at target/debug/gensee. For convenience, either add that directory to your PATH, or install gensee globally:

cargo install --path crate/gensee-crate-cli   # puts `gensee` on PATH

Gensee stores its local state under ~/.gensee by default. Set GENSEE_HOME to override it, and use the same GENSEE_HOME for watch, hooks, run, timeline, and the dashboard so the signals appear together. GENSEE_HOME is the Gensee data store, not the agent project/workspace folder:

export GENSEE_HOME="$HOME/.gensee"

For hook-based agents, there are two paths to keep straight:

• GENSEE_HOME: where Gensee records hooks, alerts, timelines, policies, and dashboard data. Use the same value across Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, VS Code, Omnigent sidecars, gensee watch, gensee timeline, and the dashboard when you want one combined view.
• agent workspace/config path: where the agent looks for its hook settings. Claude Code uses ~/.claude/settings.json, Codex uses ~/.codex/hooks.json, Antigravity defaults to global ~/.gemini/config/hooks.json, and VS Code uses ~/.copilot/hooks/gensee.json. Antigravity also supports workspace-local .agents/hooks.json when you pass --hooks.

Avoid pointing GENSEE_HOME at the project workspace root. A repo-local store such as $PWD/.gensee-dev is convenient for development, while $HOME/.gensee-<agent> is better for long-running sidecars such as Omnigent so Gensee does not watch its own store writes.

The local store can include redacted prompts, commands, paths, policy alerts, and lineage data. Fresh telemetry stores are encrypted at rest by default with a local key in $GENSEE_HOME/gensee.key. Keep that key private and do not share it with store snapshots; sharing the key and store together gives readers access to the telemetry. Existing plaintext development stores remain readable rather than breaking hooks; move or remove the old GENSEE_HOME to start a fresh encrypted store. Set GENSEE_STORE_ENCRYPTION=0 only for local debugging stores.

Toolchain and prerequisites (if the installer reports a missing tool)

• macOS and Linux for the stable v0.1 path. Linux host controls include /proc process attribution, fanotify sensitive-path enforcement, seccomp launcher profiles, and cgroup/nftables network controls.
• Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, or VS Code / GitHub Copilot for hook-based enforcement. Other agents are planned.
• Rust toolchain (cargo) and jq.
• On Linux: build tools, pkg-config, OpenSSL headers, nftables, and git.

Install the required command-line tools on macOS:

xcode-select --install

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh -s -- -y
source "$HOME/.cargo/env"

brew install jq

Install the required command-line tools on Ubuntu/Debian Linux:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y build-essential pkg-config libssl-dev jq nftables git

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh -s -- -y
source "$HOME/.cargo/env"

Configure agent hooks manually

To capture prompt/tool intent and enforce the safety policy, configure your agent's hooks to call the matching gensee hook endpoint. The installer offers Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, Cursor, and opt-in VS Code setup. To run the setup step later for Claude Code:

gensee setup claude-code --gensee-home "$GENSEE_HOME"

If your team requires Claude Code traffic to pass through an inspecting LLM gateway, configure that during the same setup step:

gensee setup claude-code \
  --gensee-home "$GENSEE_HOME" \
  --anthropic-base-url https://llm-gateway.example.com \
  --anthropic-auth-token "$GATEWAY_TOKEN"

For local screening/blocking, start the bundled gateway and point Claude Code at it:

GENSEE_HOME="$GENSEE_HOME" \
GENSEE_BIN="$PWD/target/debug/gensee" \
GENSEE_GATEWAY_TOKEN="local-gateway-token" \
ANTHROPIC_UPSTREAM_API_KEY="$ANTHROPIC_API_KEY" \
node scripts/anthropic_gateway.mjs

./target/debug/gensee setup claude-code \
  --gensee-home "$GENSEE_HOME" \
  --anthropic-base-url http://127.0.0.1:8787 \
  --anthropic-auth-token local-gateway-token

Or for Codex:

gensee setup codex --gensee-home "$GENSEE_HOME"

Or for global Antigravity hooks:

gensee setup antigravity --gensee-home "$GENSEE_HOME"

Or for VS Code / GitHub Copilot:

gensee setup vscode --gensee-home "$GENSEE_HOME"

VS Code also loads ~/.claude/settings.json. Configure the dedicated VS Code provider when you need its native tool-name parsing, and avoid installing both providers for the same VS Code sessions so the hook does not run twice.

Or for Cursor:

gensee setup cursor --gensee-home "$GENSEE_HOME"

For workspace-local Antigravity hooks instead, pass an explicit workspace hook path:

gensee setup antigravity \
  --gensee-home "$GENSEE_HOME" \
  --hooks /path/to/workspace/.agents/hooks.json

If you are running from a source checkout instead of an installed binary:

./target/debug/gensee setup claude-code --gensee-home "$GENSEE_HOME"
./target/debug/gensee setup codex --gensee-home "$GENSEE_HOME"
./target/debug/gensee setup antigravity --gensee-home "$GENSEE_HOME"
./target/debug/gensee setup vscode --gensee-home "$GENSEE_HOME"
./target/debug/gensee setup cursor --gensee-home "$GENSEE_HOME"

The setup commands merge Gensee into the previous hook settings, update ~/.claude/settings.json, ~/.codex/hooks.json, or ~/.gemini/config/hooks.json or ~/.cursor/hooks.json, or write ~/.copilot/hooks/gensee.json by default. They use the absolute path to the gensee binary you invoked. Existing non-Gensee commands in the same event are preserved; stale or duplicate Gensee commands are replaced with one current entry. Setup rejects malformed hook structures without writing the file, and atomically updates and backs up a config only when its contents change. Fully restart Claude Code, Antigravity, or Cursor after changing their hook config. VS Code reloads hook files automatically. Open /hooks in Codex to review and trust the hook command before testing enforcement. Full manual config and what gets recorded (plus redaction details) are in docs/claude-code-hooks.md, docs/codex-support.md, docs/antigravity-support.md, docs/vscode-support.md, and docs/cursor-support.md.

Updating to a new release

Rerun the installer to update gensee in place:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GenseeAI/gensee-crate/main/scripts/install_oss.sh | bash

If you installed from a source checkout, pull the latest changes and reinstall:

git pull --ff-only
cargo install --path crate/gensee-crate-cli --force

2. Run

Choose the section for your operating system. Each path can combine hooks, sidecar watching, and managed gensee run launches.

macOS

Hooks only. Agent requests and tool calls are checked by Gensee policy after Step 1 setup. No extra command needs to keep running.

Watch. Observe workspace file effects, and optionally ingest macOS EndpointSecurityLogger events:

gensee watch # optional flags: --workspace --watch-root --duration-seconds
sudo gensee watch --system-events eslogger

If you use --system-events eslogger, open Apple menu > System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access, click +, add the app hosting gensee (for example Terminal, iTerm, or Visual Studio Code), then quit and reopen that app.

Run. Launch the agent as a child of Gensee. --sandbox mac uses sandbox-exec and can stage workspace writes for review.

gensee run -- claude # or: gensee run -- codex
gensee run --sandbox mac --profile cautious --workspace-mode staged -- claude

For orchestration frameworks such as Omnigent, use the same outer safety layer:

gensee watch --workspace . --watch-root ~/.omnigent
gensee run --workspace-mode staged -- omnigent run path/to/agent.yaml

Linux

Hooks only. Agent requests and tool calls are checked by Gensee policy after Step 1 setup. No extra command needs to keep running.

Environment config. Linux host controls include /proc process attribution, fanotify sensitive-path permission enforcement, seccomp launcher profiles, and cgroup/nftables network controls. Kernel-owned controls need sudo; supervised launches and seccomp-only launches can usually run without it.

For Node/npm-installed agents such as Codex or Claude Code, preserve PATH so the agent shim can still find node, and preserve HOME/GENSEE_HOME so Gensee and the agent use the expected user config:

export GENSEE_HOME="${GENSEE_HOME:-$HOME/.gensee}"
alias gensee-sudo='sudo env "PATH=$PATH" "HOME=$HOME" "GENSEE_HOME=$GENSEE_HOME" gensee'

Add those two lines to ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, or your shell profile to make them permanent. Because these commands preserve HOME while running privileged controls, a root-launched agent may create root-owned files in your home directory.

Inspect Linux host capabilities and enabled controls:

gensee status --json

Watch. Attach to an already-running agent process tree:

gensee watch --pid <agent-root-pid>

Run. Launch the agent as a child of Gensee with Linux host controls:

gensee-sudo run --sandbox linux -- codex

If testing from a source build, use the same pattern with the debug binary:

sudo env "PATH=$PATH" "HOME=$HOME" "GENSEE_HOME=${GENSEE_HOME:-$HOME/.gensee}" \
  ./target/debug/gensee run --sandbox linux -- codex

For orchestration frameworks such as Omnigent, use the same outer safety layer:

gensee watch --workspace . --watch-root ~/.omnigent
gensee-sudo run --sandbox linux -- omnigent run path/to/agent.yaml

Tclone runtime. On a prepared GenseeAI/os4agent tclone host, launch an agent in cloneable container storage and fork it from another terminal. Tclone provides low-latency full-workspace forking for AI agents:

export GENSEE_HOME="${GENSEE_HOME:-$HOME/.gensee}"
export GENSEE_TCLONE_PODMAN="$HOME/os4agent/podman-tfork.sh"
alias gensee-tclone='sudo env "PATH=$PATH" "HOME=$HOME" "TERM=$TERM" "TMUX=$TMUX" "GENSEE_HOME=$GENSEE_HOME" "GENSEE_TCLONE_PODMAN=$GENSEE_TCLONE_PODMAN" "GENSEE_TCLONE_IMAGE=$GENSEE_TCLONE_IMAGE" gensee'

gensee-tclone run --runtime tclone -- codex
gensee-tclone run list              # source id is under "Tclone containers"
gensee-tclone run fork <source-run-id> --copies 2 --attach tmux:right --json
gensee-tclone run attach <fork-id> --tmux right
gensee-tclone run send <fork-id> -- 'Run cargo test and fix failures'
gensee-tclone run exec <fork-id> -- bash -lc 'cargo test'
gensee-tclone run diff <fork-id>
gensee-tclone run merge <fork-id> --into <source-run-id>   # default: --git
gensee-tclone run switch <fork-id>                         # continue from the fork

The tclone launcher also prints the source id directly: gensee: fork from another terminal with: gensee run fork run_.... Agent hooks also record fork suggestions for exploratory requests and commands such as dependency upgrades, migrations, broad refactors, lockfile changes, destructive cleanup, and database resets. In Codex tclone source runs, matching user prompts add fork guidance before planning; matching source commands are blocked as a backstop so the risky work happens in a fork first. Async fork JSON includes status_command; poll it only until status=succeeded, then send work to forks[0].run_id. After sending work with gensee run send, do not poll Gensee for task completion: the fork is an interactive agent session attached in tmux, so ask the user to report the fork result. Use a tclone image with tmux for reliable gensee run attach. From inside a host tmux session, --attach tmux:right opens the forked live agent in a new pane. Without tmux, gensee run shell still opens a new shell but does not reconnect to the live agent UI. Use gensee run exec <fork-id> -- <command> for non-interactive, container-scoped commands in a fork, or gensee run send <fork-id> -- <prompt> to visibly send work into the forked agent pane.

See docs/watch.md, docs/run-and-sandbox.md, and docs/linux.md for the full options. See docs/tclone.md for cloneable container runtime workflows.

3. Examine results

CLI. Inspect what happened at any time:

gensee run list   # list guarded run sessions and staged workspaces
gensee timeline   # show prompts, tool intent, file effects, and policy decisions

Dashboard. Open the local native dashboard for a view of the same store:

The local dashboard reads the same GENSEE_HOME store as watch, hooks, and timeline. It shows live agent activity, policy decisions, alerts, file and request lineage, and the active policy document; users can record review verdicts and edit validated policy settings in the desktop application.

Install dependencies once, then launch from the repository checkout:

npm install --prefix dashboards --legacy-peer-deps
cargo install tauri-cli --version "^2" --locked
cd dashboards
GENSEE_HOME="$HOME/.gensee" cargo tauri dev

This opens a native desktop window backed by the Rust core. No TCP server is started; all data access goes through Tauri IPC.

See dashboards/README.md for requirements, demo data, and policy editing notes.

The activity view brings policy decisions, timeline filtering, event details, and command/tool context into one local desktop surface.

The lineage view links derived artifacts and shows the facts behind each path, including current risk state and the policy/query context used to inspect it.

The multi-turn view highlights long-horizon patterns across a session, including read-to-exfiltration chains, memory-poison signals, repeated artifact targeting, and policy decisions over time.

4. Manage policy

Use gensee policy or the dashboard UI to inspect, initialize, validate, and edit the active policy document without copying files by hand:

gensee policy path
gensee policy setup
gensee policy validate "$GENSEE_HOME/policy.json"

gensee policy setup walks through the same dashboard-style policy settings, artifact definitions, and decision rules. Use it to tune resource limits, network egress, runtime, enforcement, watch system events, allowlisted paths, what counts as executable/memory/skill/control-plane artifacts, and whether each safety rule denies, asks, or allows.

Use gensee policy print-default to inspect the bundled default policy. The guided setup flow writes the user policy to $GENSEE_HOME/policy.json, which is auto-loaded by the hook, CLI, and dashboard when GENSEE_POLICY_FILE is unset. You can also point GENSEE_POLICY_FILE at a custom policy path; see docs/policy.md for the full policy workflow.

Roadmap

Gensee Crate supports macOS and Linux today, with Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, Cursor, and VS Code / GitHub Copilot hook support, local policy enforcement, staged workspace runs, local telemetry, and a native desktop dashboard. Next directions include:

• Linux system enforcement: eBPF telemetry, Landlock/AppArmor profile generation, daemon-owned fanotify lifecycle, and richer per-attempt attribution.
• Transactional Linux runtimes: initial tclone launch/fork/shell/diff/keep support is available; next work is post-fork hook rebind, policy-controlled rollback, and multi-fork lifecycle management.
• Endpoint Security-based macOS defense: deeper host-level file, process, and network visibility once the Apple Endpoint Security path is available.
• Sandbox support: stronger gensee run confinement, staged writes, and speculative or transactional execution for risky agent actions.
• ML-based policy and rules: learning from controlled traces, blocked actions, and bypass attempts to improve risk scoring and policy suggestions.
• Integrations: support for more agents and security tooling, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Omnigent, CrowdStrike, LLM gateways, MCP servers, and audit/security workflow exports.

See docs/roadmap.md for more detail.

Documentation

Full docs live in docs/:

• Architecture — the v0.1 wedge, workspace crates, and roadmap.
• Roadmap — planned Linux enforcement, macOS Endpoint Security, sandbox, ML policy, and integration work.
• Linux host support — /proc monitoring, fanotify sensitive-path enforcement, seccomp launcher profiles, cgroup/nftables egress controls, and the Linux enforcement plan.
• Tclone runtime integration — launch agents in cloneable Linux containers, fork live source containers, inspect diffs, merge/switch results, and clean up forks.
• gensee watch — sidecar filesystem and system-event audit, backends, and watch roots.
• gensee run and the macOS sandbox — managed launch and staged workspaces.
• gensee policy — inspect, initialize, validate, and edit local policy settings.
• Claude Code hooks — wiring Claude Code prompts and tool intent into Gensee.
• Codex hooks — wiring Codex prompts and tool intent into Gensee.
• Antigravity support — wiring Antigravity hooks and .agents customizations into Gensee.
• VS Code / GitHub Copilot hooks — wiring VS Code agent hooks and native tool intent into Gensee.
• Omnigent integration — thin sidecar/managed-run support and the deeper policy-bridge plan.
• Safety policy — the data-driven allow/ask/deny engine and gensee policy workflow.
• SQLite lineage graph — the provenance schema and example queries.
• Endpoint Security spike — eslogger system events and the future signed EndpointSecurity path.