Background AI agents that run routines defined in your repository, 24/7. They run on your machine under launchd with Claude Code, Codex or any other CLI agent, using your normal subscription login.

Ready to use in your organisation or at home.

1. Version-controlled by design. Merge a .md file and the change is picked up automatically.
2. Minimal and lightweight. Run one command on a machine that is on 24/7. Easy for non-engineers to contribute to.
3. Your own integrations. Agents use your local environment as is, including skills, MCP, browser control and more.
4. Cheap. Works with your existing Claude or Codex subscription. Don't burn your money on tokens.
5. Remote control. Debug and monitor your remote machine from your mobile on your commute.
6. Webhooks. Linear, GitHub or any other app can start a routine with a request, and the agent gets its body.
7. Battle-tested. Polished on real use cases across engineering, design, product management and GTM.

Ideas:

1. Post-release monitoring. Checks Intercom, Sentry, Grafana and the logs for problems in code shipped over the last 3 days, raises an alert and opens PRs with fixes.
2. On-call engineer. Investigates production incidents and opens PRs to fix them.
3. Flaky E2E test fixer.
4. Dead code and feature flag clean-up.
5. Picking up bug fixes.
6. Monitoring support chats for product signals.
7. Delegating tasks to an agent from your task manager.

Quickstart:

1. Add Kombinat to the repository that will hold your routines.

   pnpm add kombinat   # with npm: npm install kombinat

2. Add your routines as .md files in a routines/ folder next to package.json, see Writing a routine. Changes are picked up on the next check, no restart needed. Agents run with your usual setup, so your global skills, MCP servers and CLAUDE.md are picked up.

   my-routines-or-project/
   ├── routines/
   │   └── fix-e2e-tests.md
   └── package.json
   

3. Start from that folder.

   pnpm kombinat serve   # or: npx kombinat serve

   It runs in this terminal. To keep it running in the background and after reboots, stop it and run pnpm kombinat install instead, see Setup.

4. Monitor and debug runs in the dashboard at http://localhost:7433, or in the terminal with pnpm kombinat tui, which also works over ssh. See Monitoring. To open them from another machine, see Remote access.

Monitoring

The daemon serves a dashboard at http://localhost:7433.

• Routines.
• Calendar.
• Runs.
• Daemon status.

In the terminal

pnpm kombinat tui shows the same in the terminal. It works over ssh. Press ? for keys.

Remote access

Over SSH

Turn on Remote Login on the Mac that runs Kombinat, in System Settings → General → Sharing. Then, on your laptop:

npx kombinat connect admin@mac-mini         # dashboard in the browser
npx kombinat connect admin@mac-mini --tui   # dashboard in the terminal

It opens an SSH tunnel to the daemon, then the dashboard. SSH asks for the password if you have no key set up. Ctrl-C disconnects. Instead of admin@mac-mini, use anything ssh accepts: a host from ~/.ssh/config, an IP address or a Tailscale machine name. If the daemon there uses another KOMBINAT_PORT, add --port.

You can also ssh in and run pnpm kombinat tui in the folder Kombinat runs in.

With Tailscale Serve

To open the dashboard from any device in your tailnet, your phone included, run this on the Mac that runs Kombinat:

tailscale serve --bg 7433

The dashboard is then at https://mac-mini.<your-tailnet>.ts.net, and npx kombinat tui --url https://mac-mini.<your-tailnet>.ts.net shows it in the terminal. Serve needs HTTPS certificates in your tailnet, the command asks to turn them on. They put the machine name in public certificate logs. It stays on after a reboot, tailscale serve --https=443 off turns it off. If the Mac has no tailscale command, see Using the Tailscale CLI.

Everyone who can reach the Mac in your tailnet can then read transcripts and start routines. To limit that, allow only some people to reach port 443 of the Mac in your Tailscale access rules.

Routines

The example routines of this repository, one row per file in routines/. Put the same routines:start and routines:end comments in your own README, and pnpm kombinat readme keeps a table like this one up to date.

Routine	When	What it does
weather-example-routine	Weekdays at 08:00	Says if you need an umbrella today
weather-webhook-example-routine	On webhook	Says if you need an umbrella in the city from the request

How it works

• Each routine is a markdown file. The frontmatter sets the schedule and settings, the body is the prompt.
• A small daemon checks every 30 seconds which routines are due and starts their agent. It also serves a dashboard at http://localhost:7433.
• launchd on macOS or systemd on Linux keeps the daemon running and starts it again after a reboot. Runs only happen while the computer is awake and you are logged in. On Linux, lingering lets them run while you are logged out.
• Logs and run history are stored in ~/.kombinat/.
• Claude and Codex use your subscription login. API key variables are removed from their environment.

Setup

You need Node 24 and the agents your routines use, logged in: Claude Code (claude auth status) and Codex (codex login). From the folder with routines/ and package.json:

pnpm add kombinat
pnpm kombinat install

This starts the daemon in that folder, under launchd on macOS or as a systemd user service on Linux, see docs/linux.md. Open http://localhost:7433. There is one daemon per user, so running install in another folder moves it there.

Commands

Run them from the same folder. With npm, use npx kombinat instead of pnpm kombinat, with Yarn yarn kombinat.

pnpm kombinat list           # routines, next run, last status
pnpm kombinat run <name>     # run a routine now, in the foreground
pnpm kombinat validate       # check all routine files
pnpm kombinat tui            # dashboard in the terminal, works over ssh
pnpm kombinat status         # daemon and scheduler state
pnpm kombinat readme         # update the routines table in README.md
pnpm kombinat uninstall      # stop and remove the daemon

Writing a routine

---
name: fix-e2e-tests
description: Finds the failing e2e test and fixes it
schedule: '30 11 * * *'
cwd: ~/projects/app
agent: claude
model: claude-opus-5-5
fallbackModel: claude-sonnet-5-5
effort: high
timeoutMinutes: 55
---

1. Open the latest failed e2e run on GitHub ...

• name must match the file name.
• schedule is a 5-field cron in local time, or manual to run only on demand.
• cwd is where the agent starts.
• agent is claude (default), codex or command.
• timeoutMinutes stops the run after this time. Default 55.
• before is an optional shell command that runs first. If it fails or takes more than 3 minutes, the run fails.
• enabled: false keeps the file but stops the schedule.
• webhook: true lets other apps start the routine with a request, see docs/webhook.md.

Changes apply on the next check, no restart needed. Write the prompt so the agent never has to ask a question: nobody will answer.

Agents

Setting	claude	codex	command
model	default claude-opus-5-5	default from your Codex config	-
fallbackModel	optional, see below	-	-
effort	low, medium, high (default), xhigh, max	minimal, low, medium, high, xhigh	-
permissionMode	auto (default), acceptEdits, dontAsk, bypassPermissions, plan, manual	read-only, workspace-write (default), danger-full-access	-
maxBudgetUsd	optional	-	-
command	-	-	required

• claude runs claude -p. Anything that needs approval is denied.
• fallbackModel is the model Claude switches to when model is not available, overloaded or fails, such as claude-sonnet-5-5. A comma-separated list is tried in order. The run's transcript says when it switched.
• codex runs codex exec. permissionMode sets its sandbox.
• command runs any other CLI, for example command: gemini --yolo. It gets the prompt on stdin, and its output is the result.

A setting the agent does not support fails validation.

Scheduling

• On macOS, the installed daemon keeps the Mac awake while it is on power. On battery the Mac sleeps as usual, and a laptop with a closed lid can still sleep. macOS has a system-wide switch that turns sleep off, sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1, which Kombinat does not touch.
• If the Mac was asleep, each routine runs once for its latest missed time, up to 7 days back.
• A routine never runs twice at the same time. If it is still running at its next time, that run is skipped.
• At most 3 routines run at once.

Webhooks

A routine with webhook: true also runs when another app, such as Linear or GitHub, sends it a request. The request body goes into the prompt, an optional webhookGate command checks and filters requests, and requests that arrive while the routine runs wait in a queue. See docs/webhook.md.

Updating

The daemon runs git pull in the folder every 5 minutes, so merged changes go live on their own. It only pulls when the checkout is on main with no local changes.

To update Kombinat, bump kombinat in package.json, for example with a Renovate or Dependabot PR. When the lockfile changes, the daemon installs dependencies with pnpm, npm or Yarn and restarts. Running routines are not interrupted.

Up to 0.2.2, Kombinat was published as @danilqa/kombinat. To move to kombinat, replace the dependency in package.json, install it and run pnpm kombinat install again. Until then the launchd job of the daemon points into the old package folder, which the install removes, so the daemon does not pick up the new version or start again after a reboot.

Configuration

Variable	Default	What
KOMBINAT_PORT	7433	dashboard port
KOMBINAT_STATE_DIR	~/.kombinat	logs and history
KOMBINAT_ROUTINES_DIR	./routines	routine files
KOMBINAT_MAX_CONCURRENT	3	routines that can run at once
KOMBINAT_TICK_SECONDS	30	how often the daemon checks routines
KOMBINAT_PULL_MINUTES	5	auto git pull interval, 0 to disable
KOMBINAT_PULL_BRANCH	main	branch the daemon pulls
KOMBINAT_KEEP_AWAKE	on when installed	Mac stays awake on power, 0 to disable
CLAUDE_BIN	~/.local/bin/claude	Claude Code binary
CODEX_BIN	codex	Codex binary

Set them before pnpm kombinat install. They are saved in the launchd or systemd config.