v0.1.2 · CI green · Apache-2.0 · Cross-platform binaries

A swarm of drones
programs while you sleep.

DevClaw is an open-source autonomous AI coding kernel written in Go. One binary, zero deps, any OpenAI-compatible LLM. Five roles, thirteen built-in tools, parallel sub-drones, git worktree isolation.

⬇ Download v0.1.2 ⭐ Star on GitHub

or from source: go install github.com/yinhe/devclaw/cmd/drone@latest

Built-in tools

Roles

Release binaries

MCP

Native support

External deps

Install

Pick your OS. The binary is ~2.5 MiB and has zero runtime dependencies.

Linux / macOS

# 1. Download the release archive for your platform from GitHub
#    (replace ARCH with x86_64 or arm64, OS with linux or mac)
curl -fSL "https://github.com/yinhe/devclaw/releases/latest/download/drone_0.1.2_linux_x86_64.tar.gz" \
  | tar xz

# 2. Move to PATH
sudo mv drone /usr/local/bin/

# 3. Smoke test
drone version
drone roles

# 4. Run against local Ollama (free, offline) or any OpenAI-compatible API
ollama pull qwen3-coder
drone run "add JSDoc comments to all exported functions in src/utils.js"

Windows (PowerShell)

# Download + extract
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://github.com/yinhe/devclaw/releases/latest/download/drone_0.1.2_windows_x86_64.zip" -OutFile drone.zip
Expand-Archive drone.zip -DestinationPath .

# Smoke test
.\drone.exe version
.\drone.exe roles

From source (Go 1.24+)

go install github.com/yinhe/devclaw/cmd/drone@latest

What's in this project · what's not

DevClaw is a kernel. Everything here is open-source under Apache-2.0. Nothing below requires a paid plan.

What's in Apache-2.0 · free

Everything you need to run autonomous coding on your own machine.

Runtime — agent loop, context compression, trajectory logging
13 built-in tools — bash, file_read/write, multi_edit, agent, parallel, undo, bash_approval, …
5 roles — dev, test, ops, sense, scout × 3 permission tiers
MCP client — stdio transport, load any Model Context Protocol server
Providers — OpenAI-compatible (Ollama, OpenAI, StarAI, DeepSeek, …) + retry + streaming
Git worktree isolation — automatic per-task sandboxing
CLI — one Go binary, zero deps, cross-platform

Everything above is permanent and free. No telemetry, no login, no rate limits from us.

What's not internal · not for sale

The StarClaw team maintains closed-source tooling that wraps this kernel for internal use.

Forge — issue tracking & orchestration surface
Pheromone — event bus & task pool
Overlord — fleet management for many drones
Abathur — trajectory → distilled skills engine
Web console, marketplace, billing, support contracts

You don't need any of them. The kernel is fully functional standalone. If you want similar functionality, fork it — Apache-2.0 lets you build anything on top.

Why DevClaw

Built to be useful on your laptop today, not to upsell you tomorrow.

🐝

Swarm-native from day one

Agent and Parallel are built-in tools. One drone can spawn up to 5 sub-drones and collate their work. A task tree, not a loop.

🎭

Roles + permissions as hard constraints

Five roles × three permission tiers (readonly, workspace_write, full_access) enforced in the runtime, not the prompt. Safe by default.

🧠

Project knowledge built in

DRONE.md and .drone/skills/*.md are auto-injected into every run — your conventions, gotchas, and patterns travel with the drone.

🔌

Model Context Protocol, natively

First-class MCP stdio client. Drop any community server into .drone/mcp.json and the new tools respect the same permission tiers.

🌲

Worktree isolation

Every task gets its own git worktree. Drones never clobber each other's work — parallelism without merge hell.

📦

One Go binary · zero deps

Pre-built releases for linux/mac/windows × amd64/arm64. ~2.5 MiB. Runs behind any firewall with any OpenAI-compatible LLM.

Ready to try it?

Download v0.1.2 Read the source Ask a question

A swarm of drones programs while you sleep.