Jig

Status: v0.1 in progress — the Tuesday cut

Nothing leaves your machine unless you connect an agent. Jig runs locally: no telemetry, no accounts, no cloud. The only network calls it makes are to the app you point it at, to a local Ollama instance if one is running, and to download a small model the first time you run it.

What Jig is

Jig is a benchtop for shaping a feature before an agent builds it. You clamp (attach) an existing app repo, or a folder of its docs, into the bench. Jig surveys (reads) the app: its stack, screens, components, and gauges (design system tokens). The app lands on the plate (where it renders and can be clicked) as a working, clickable surface. You put the loupe (point-and-inspect) on anything, say what should change, and Jig's local model drafts a work order: the requirement, the acceptance, and a fixture (reproducible test data), plus — once you release (approve) it — the shop face, an implementation brief written in the app's own stack idiom. The work order is a file in the repo. Any connected agent (the shop) picks it up over MCP, builds it, and Jig shows the trial fit: the app with the change, next to the app before it.

Jig never edits application source. It only writes files under .jig/ in the repo you clamped.

60-second quick start

No install, no admin, no global anything — npx fetches and runs jigbench from your own npm cache.

cd your-app-repo
npx jigbench

This starts the local server, clamps the current repo, and opens the bench in your browser at http://localhost:4600 (the plate — where a clamped app renders — proxies through 4601; both are configurable with --port/--plate-port and bind to loopback only unless you pass --host).

To wire up Claude Code:

npx jigbench init

This writes .mcp.json at the repo root (so Claude Code registers jig as a local MCP server on stdio, launched as npx jigbench mcp) and creates the .jig/ folder. Open the repo in Claude Code — it reads .mcp.json automatically, connects to Jig over stdio, lists the open work orders as MCP resources, and can claim and implement one. When it reports a work order done, the bench shows the trial fit.

Claude Desktop has no per-project .mcp.json of its own, so it needs a separate step:

npx jigbench mcp install --claude-desktop

This prints the diff to Claude Desktop's claude_desktop_config.json without writing anything; add --yes to actually write it.

Ollama (optional, local drafting)

Jig drafts a work order's human face itself when a local model is reachable — no agent required to get a first draft. Install Ollama (no admin needed on Windows), then:

ollama pull qwen2.5-coder:7b

Jig looks for Ollama at http://127.0.0.1:11434 by default (override with JIG_OLLAMA_URL). If Ollama isn't reachable, Jig falls back to a connected agent (jig_draft over MCP), then to a human filling the work order by hand — always something, never a hard stop. Set JIG_NO_MODEL=1 to skip the Ollama probe entirely (used by this repo's own CI and tests, never needed day to day).

The tongue

Jig uses its own words for a few ideas. Each pairs with a plain word the first time it comes up in the UI or the docs.

Jig says	Plain word
Bench	workspace, one per clamped repo
Clamp	attach a repo or docs folder
Survey	the read of the repo: stack, screens, components, gauges, data shapes
Plate	where the app renders and is clicked
Loupe	point at anything and see what it is
Mark	a highlighted spot with a request attached
Work order	one change: human face + shop face
Release	approve a work order; the shop face is filled and the file is written
The shop	the connected agents (Claude Code, Claude Desktop)
Trial fit	the app with the change, beside the app before it
Toolpath	a recorded click sequence, replayable
Fixture	a reproducible set of test data
Gauges	the design system, measured and categorized
Sketch	a screen that does not exist yet, drawn with the gauges
Scrap bin	where anything removed goes, counted and regenerable
Logbook	the record of everything that happened on the bench

Layout

packages/core             pure TypeScript, zero I/O — survey/work-order/gauges/fixture models
packages/server           MCP stdio + HTTP/WS + proxy + drafters — imports core
packages/bench            web UI (React + Vite) — imports core types only
packages/cli              the jigbench bin — thin wiring, imports server
packages/adapters/angular SurveyAdapter for Angular — imports core interfaces only
packages/adapters/dotnet  SurveyAdapter for .NET 10 — imports core interfaces only
examples/                 a tiny Angular app + a tiny .NET 10 app — not a workspace package

See MAP.md for the full repo map and what each folder is the source of truth for.

Requirements

• Node >= 22
• npm (workspaces; npm 11 or later)
• The dev environment on this project is Windows-first (Git Bash); commands in these docs are bash

Targets on day one

Angular (frontend) and .NET 10 (APIs and backend). Other stacks are adapters behind the same SurveyAdapter interface; see CONTRIBUTING.md for how to add one.

Learn it end to end

docs/USING.md walks the whole loop in Jig's own words — clamp, survey, the plate and the loupe, a mark, a work order, release, the shop, the trial fit — against the examples/ app.

License and community

Apache-2.0, see LICENSE. Contributions follow the Developer Certificate of Origin — sign off every commit with git commit -s. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the workflow, SECURITY.md for how to report a vulnerability, and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md for the community standard.

Plan

The build plan, slices, and locked decisions live in docs/EXECUTION-PLAN.md.