Prerequisites

Node 24 or newer. A runtime floor rather than a preference: the coverage cycle spawns the test runner with --test-isolation=process, which Node 22 rejects as a bad option, so on anything older that measurement does not happen.

A model, frontier or local:

```sh export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=... # or OPENAI_API_KEY, GOOGLE_GENERATIVE_AI_API_KEY

Getting Started

Installation

npm install -g swarm-orchestrator

That is 14.0.2, and it leaves swarm on your path. If swarm turns out to be an older version than you installed, swarm doctor says what owns the command and --fix repairs it.

Anything below 13 is a different program: this package name carried a pull-request auditor through 12.x. Pin the major if you depend on one or the other.

<p align="right">(<a href="#readme-top">back to top</a>)</p>

Usage

swarm "make slugify collapse whitespace and strip punctuation"

Real output, swarm gates over a two-test project:

  passed   tests: 2 collected, 2 passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped (exit 0)
  passed   placeholder: no placeholder marker was introduced by this change
  passed   secret-scan: no known credential pattern appears in the added lines
  n/a      typecheck: package.json declares no typecheck script

bonds, one per gate that passed:
  tests: held. the tests gate refused the bond: 3 collected, 2 passed, 1 failed, 0 skipped
  secret-scan: held. the secret-scan gate refused the bond: 1 added line(s) match a known
    credential pattern: swarm-falsification-bond.env.example.js:1 (github-token)

acceptable: yes (no blocking gate failed, no policy gate failed, and something executed the change)

A pass is a claim until it is shown able to fail. After the gates go green, each one that passed is handed a bond — one file it has to refuse. A check that refused it held. A check that passed over a bond it demonstrably saw is vacuous, and a vacuous blocking gate makes the run not green whatever the cycle said.

The four commands most people need:

swarm                              # a session: type tasks, one after another
swarm gates                        # run the gates over a workspace, no model
swarm ci --patch <file>            # verify a patch in a fresh checkout of the base
swarm verify <bundle> --signer <f> # check a bundle, and who signed it

Every command and flag is in docs/cli.md. Sessions, several workers at once and swarm.toml are in docs/using.md.

<p align="right">(<a href="#readme-top">back to top</a>)</p>

or start Ollama / rapid-mlx and pass --model local:<id>

```

Keys come from the environment or your OS keychain, never from swarm.toml — that file is committed and cloned, so a key in it has already been shared with everyone holding the repository.