Kaizen

Kaizen is a personal-use Claude Code plugin. It runs Atelier's multi-agent improvement methodology against any git repository specified by URL:

clone → N improvement cycles → one bundled GitHub PR

The target repo is cloned into an ephemeral work area, improved over N independent cycles, and the results ship as a single PR. Your local copy of the target repo is never touched — all git operations happen inside Kaizen's throwaway clone, which is deleted after the PR opens.

Successful cycles land as commits; cycles that can't reach completion are abandoned gracefully (with a formal report referenced in the PR body) and the next cycle still runs.

Slash command

There is one user-invocable command:

kaizen:improve <git-url> [--cycles N] [--subject "<area to improve>"]

• <git-url> — required. https or ssh form (e.g. https://github.com/owner/repo.git or git@github.com:owner/repo.git).
• --cycles N — number of independent improvement cycles to run. Default: 1.
• --subject "..." — optional focus area. If omitted, the PM agent decides per cycle.

All other operations are internal procedures (internal/<name>/SKILL.md) reachable by agents, not invoked directly.

Hard dependencies

Kaizen refuses to run if any of these are missing:

• git on PATH
• gh CLI on PATH and authenticated (gh auth status exits 0)
• Atelier installed via Agora (atelier:run skill available) — provides the 61-role roster and dev-arc skills used by the cycle agents
• Memex installed via Agora (memex:run skill available) — used to capture abandonment reports and cycle minutes
• Python 3.11+ with pip install -r requirements.txt applied

scripts/setup.py verifies all of these and fails loudly if any are missing.

Setup (once per machine)

1. Clone Kaizen locally (sibling to atelier, memex, agora):

   git clone https://github.com/nitekeeper/kaizen.git
   

2. Install Python dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt
   

3. Run the setup script from Kaizen's root — this verifies the external dependencies and applies the schema migration to .ai/memex.db:

   PYTHONPATH=. python3 scripts/setup.py
   

4. Install Kaizen via Agora (kaizen is registered in the marketplace), or register it as a local plugin in Claude Code.

Distribution

Personal use. Kaizen is registered in Agora (install via the marketplace) but is not published to PyPI. It can also be installed by cloning the repo and registering it manually with Claude Code.

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See CLAUDE.md for the full operating charter, architecture pointers, and working rules.