# Cascade

> Cascade is one coordination layer for every kind of agent: AI agents, coding agents, agent swarms, workers, people, robots, drones, humanoids and vehicles. Before an agent acts on something shared (a file, a ticket, a deploy, a tool call, a route, a robot bay, a time window), it claims a named cell. Exactly one agent gets a grant; the others get a hold and are told who has it. Every decision is signed into a chain anyone can verify offline. No model is in the decision path, so it costs no LLM tokens. Free to start: 1,000,000 decisions, no card.

The quickest start: several coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) on one repo. A pre-edit hook claims `file/<path>` before each edit, so two agents never overwrite each other. Beyond that: swarms that share one plan toward a goal (a hosted, signed board), one deploy at a time across CI, agents and people, and robots or drones reserving routes, airspace and time windows all or nothing.

The API is plain REST with a bearer key: `POST /v1/claim`, `POST /v1/release`, `GET /v1/runs/current/bundle`, and `/v1/boards` for shared plans. Claims support fencing tokens, all-or-nothing multi-claims, waiting instead of polling, and signed outcomes; holds survive restarts. A new key works at once for 1,000 decisions; verifying the signup email unlocks the full free allowance.

## Start here

- [SKILL.md](https://cascadedynamics.ai/SKILL.md): the full guide for AI coding tools: the whole API, rules for the code you write, drop-in helpers in Node and Python
- [Recipes](https://cascadedynamics.ai/recipes.html): copy-in files for common jobs: an integration self-test and receipt audit, swarms toward a goal, file locks for parallel coding agents, one-deploy-at-a-time, run-once actions, concurrency slots, singletons, ticket handoff, crawling, route and time-window reservations for robots and drones, all-or-nothing reservation of everything one job needs, store-side fence checks that refuse late writes (Postgres, S3, Redis), zone leases that make a robot stop on its own if it loses contact, and signed proof of which file a job produced
- [Connect every AI agent](https://cascadedynamics.ai/agents.html): one hosted MCP URL (https://api.cascadedynamics.ai/mcp) for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, VS Code Copilot, ChatGPT, claude.ai and Grok, with the standing instruction to paste into each
- [Check your integration and receipts](https://cascadedynamics.ai/recipes.html#check): `node check.mjs` self-test, `node check.mjs audit record.json` for auditors
- [File-lock hook for coding agents](https://cascadedynamics.ai/recipes.html#file-locks): Claude Code, Codex and Cursor hook configs

## Reference

- [Docs](https://cascadedynamics.ai/docs.html): quickstart, concepts, starters, API reference, verification spec
- [OpenAPI 3.1](https://cascadedynamics.ai/openapi.json): the public endpoints and their response shapes
- [Verify a run](https://cascadedynamics.ai/verify.html): check a signed bundle in the browser, offline

## Packages

- [cascade-coordination-mcp](https://www.npmjs.com/package/cascade-coordination-mcp): MCP server with claim, release, usage, receipt and shared-board tools. Claude Code: `claude mcp add --env CASCADE_API_KEY=csc_... --transport stdio cascade -- npx -y cascade-coordination-mcp`
- [cascade-coordinate on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/cascade-coordinate/): Python SDK, standard library only
- [@cascade_dynamics/coordinate on npm](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@cascade_dynamics/coordinate): TypeScript SDK, no dependencies
- [cascade-swarm](https://www.npmjs.com/package/cascade-swarm): `npx cascade-swarm "<goal>" --agents 4 --check "npm test"` runs Claude Code or Codex workers in separate git worktrees until the check passes. Source: https://github.com/Cascade-Dynamics-AI/cascade-swarm
- [cascade-verify](https://www.npmjs.com/package/cascade-verify): offline verifier CLI (0.2 checks the full-strength v2 receipts), `npx cascade-verify bundle.json`. Source: https://github.com/Cascade-Dynamics-AI/cascade-verify

## Optional

- [Pricing](https://cascadedynamics.ai/product.html#pricing): free beta 1,000,000 lifetime decisions; Builder $49/month for 2,000,000 a month; top-ups $10 per 250,000, never expire
- [Developers](https://cascadedynamics.ai/developers.html): get a sandbox key and run a first claim in the browser
- Not available yet: on-prem and air-gapped deployment (coming soon). Checking receipts offline works today.