Plugboard

Plugboard is a local textual exchange where independent programs cooperate.

It is designed for asynchronous workflows — from simple tools like grep to AI agents. Publish work, do something else, read the results later — all through plain text.

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_{Operators routing connections — an early “plugboard” for human communication.}

It gives independent tools one small shared surface:

• publish text to a topic
• read text from the exchange
• run workers that claim messages and append follow-ups

The core mental model is:

• local textual exchange, backed by SQLite
• async-first workflow: enqueue work now, read replies later
• workers and plugins at the edge, not inside the core

plugboard request exists for quick publish-and-wait experiments, but the main model is still durable asynchronous exchange.

Getting started

Build the binaries:

cargo build
export PATH="$PWD/target/debug:$PATH"

In one terminal, start a worker:

plugboard run \
  --topic review.request \
  --success-topic review.done \
  --failure-topic review.failed \
  -- sh -c 'tr a-z A-Z'

In another terminal, publish work and read the reply:

plugboard publish review.request "Review this code"
plugboard read --topic review.done

That is the whole shape: publish to a topic, let a worker claim the message, and read the follow-up later.

Documentation

Start here:

• Docs index
• Design
• Architecture
• Quickstart

Task-oriented guides:

• Async inbox workflow
• Write a worker plugin
• Install a local model backend
• Plugboard with a local model
• Codex to Gemini workflow

Additional reference:

• Plugin backend options
• Completion notifications
• Measure local latency

License

LICENSE