KernelWork
The unit of record. Goal, constraints, acceptance criteria, priority and owner, moving through explicit states — Backlog, Ready, Running, Needs You, Review, Done — with blocked work marked in place rather than lost in a column.
The model
Work goes in. A record — and a person in control — comes out.
Kernel gives agent work a small, explicit structure: Work is attempted in sessions, sessions produce artifacts and decisions, and a handoff moves a Work item between runtimes or people without losing its context. Around all of it sit the surfaces a person uses to stay in control.
How a Work item moves
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Work is created
A goal, constraints and acceptance criteria. It starts in Backlog and has a state you can always read.
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A session runs
A runtime attaches and works. Its events, artifacts and decisions are recorded against the Work item as they happen.
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A person decides
Approvals and blockers surface in one inbox. Irreversible steps wait for a human; everything is auditable.
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A handoff carries it on
A compiled package hands the Work item to another runtime or teammate with its history intact.
The pieces
Sessions
One runtime's attempt at a Work item. A session carries its purpose, its start and end, the key events, and the artifacts and decisions it produced — so the work survives the agent that did it.
Handoffs
A compiled package — context, decisions, open questions — that moves work between runtimes or people. The receiving side starts with what it needs, not a blank prompt.
Runtimes
Codex, Claude, Gemini and your internal agents, registered with their detected capabilities, connected machines and health. Kernel orchestrates them; it never replaces them.
The human control surfaces
- Needs You
- One inbox for approvals, unresolved blockers, failed sessions and rejected handoffs — reviewable by keyboard.
- Approvals
- A person authorizes the steps that should not happen on their own. The decision is recorded with who made it.
- Activity & audit
- Every material change is an event. The activity timeline and the audit export show what happened, in order.
- Runtime registry
- What each runtime can do, which machines it runs on, and how its sessions have turned out.
See it against your own runtimes.
Kernel is self-hosted and local-first. Start from the quickstart, or request access.