Single Repo State Mode

Single-repo (vault-less) state mode

Why the harness can run on one repo with no Obsidian / Google Drive / vault dependency — and the resolution model that decides where a phase write lands. The design is in the Memory-storage seam; for the operator steps, see Run without a vault.

Why this mode exists

Before this work, harness state was vault-resident: read_state_file / write_state_file resolved PLAN.md, progress.md, and friends under <vault>/projects/<slug>/_harness/, and a write with no vault configured hard-raised. That made the harness unusable on a machine without a mounted vault — you could neither signal which mode a repo wanted nor write any phase state.

Single-repo mode removes the vault as a hard dependency. It is strictly additive and gated: when a vault is present and the repo is not in local mode, the vault write path behaves byte-for-byte as before. Local mode only changes behaviour for repos that opt into it.

The state-resolution model

Where a phase write lands is decided by two on-host configuration layers — no vault is ever consulted to resolve the mode, because configuration is on-host only; the vault holds data, never config:

• The repo-local marker — <repo>/.harness/.project-mode. The optional per-repo override. When it reads local, state I/O routes to <repo>/.harness/<file> and never raises for a missing vault. It lives in the repo so it is reachable on a vault-less machine, and it wins when present.
• The device-level default — state_mode ("local" | "backend") in <install-prefix>/.agentm-config.json. This is "how agentm runs on this machine," read vault-free. install.sh --local-state writes it at install time; scripts/agentm_config.py --state-mode local (or --state-mode backend) flips it afterwards without re-running the installer. It is consulted when no repo-local marker is set; absent, the default is backend (vault-backed, via the active storage backend).

Note

V5-6 (shipped 2026-06-18) — state_mode: vault now aliases to state_mode: backend at read time. The non-local value was renamed from "vault" to "backend" in the routing-plane de-vaulting (V5-6, task 3). Existing state_mode: vault entries in device config and .harness/.project-mode markers are aliased to "backend" transparently at read time — no operator action required; the underlying file is not rewritten. The "local" value and its semantics are unchanged. Decision: Memory-storage seam.

Precedence is deterministic: an explicit repo-local .project-mode=local marker wins over the device-level state_mode. There is no in-vault marker layer — an earlier design that read a marker from <vault>/_harness/ was removed, because configuration never lives in the vault. The mode is also never inferred from a missing vault_path: a transiently-unreachable vault must not split-brain the mode.

Why explicit opt-in, not auto-detect

The entry point is an explicit --local-state flag (plus the --state-mode setter and a /setup prompt), not an automatic "no vault ⇒ local" inference. A transiently-unreachable vault — Google Drive not mounted yet at session start — must not silently flip a vault-backed repo into local mode, because that splits state across two stores. Explicit opt-in is the safe signal; the read path still degrades gracefully for reads.

What this mode does not do

It makes local mode reachable and writable without a vault — it does not migrate state between local and vault stores. The existing migrate-harness-to-vault.sh owns migration (and hard-requires a vault). Single-repo mode only signals the mode and routes writes.

Related

• Memory-storage seam — On-host state-mode config — why the mode is configured on-host only, never in the vault, and never inferred from a missing vault_path.
• Run without a vault — the operator recipe for enabling single-repo local state.
• Installer CLI — the --local-state flag and the agentm_config.py --state-mode setter.
• Project config — how register() degrades when no vault is present.
• Vault write protocol — the per-vault mutex that guards vault-mode writes; repo-local writes are partitioned by construction and take the atomic writer with no mutex.