Why Bonsai

The problem

Claude Code out of the box gets you a smart assistant. The moment you want it to (a) pick up where it left off last week, (b) stay inside scope across sessions, or (c) follow your team’s standards without re-briefing every time — a single CLAUDE.md hits its ceiling. You end up writing walls of markdown by hand and rediscovering the same patterns in every project: identity files, memory protocols, security rules, scope boundaries, review checklists.

And once multiple agents are working in the same codebase, the parallel instruction sets drift apart — backend’s plan template doesn’t match frontend’s, security’s review checklist doesn’t match the Tech Lead’s, and there’s no shared source of truth for what “done” looks like.

What Bonsai gives you

Bonsai generates a workspace under station/ plus per-agent workspaces, plus the Claude Code hook wiring that enforces them.

  Layer 6 │ Sensors       │ Automated enforcement via Claude Code hooks
  Layer 5 │ Routines      │ Periodic self-maintenance on a schedule
  Layer 4 │ Skills        │ Domain knowledge — standards, patterns, conventions
  Layer 3 │ Workflows     │ Step-by-step procedures — planning, review, audit
  Layer 2 │ Protocols     │ Hard rules — security, scope, memory, startup
  Layer 1 │ Core          │ Identity, memory, self-awareness

The mechanisms underneath: a SessionStart hook injects identity, memory, active plans, and overdue routines before the agent’s first reply; PreToolUse scope guards block edits outside an agent’s workspace at the tool call; .bonsai-lock.yaml tracks every generated file with a content hash so user edits are never silently overwritten; protocols and standards live in version-controlled markdown so changes show up in git log instead of vanishing into a prompt.

Who it’s for

Solo developers

Want their agent to remember context across sessions, follow project standards, and stay inside scope without re-briefing.

Teams

Coordinating multiple agents (backend, frontend, devops) across one codebase — with shared plans, status, and standards in version control.

Anyone tired of copy-pasting

Stop copying agent instructions between projects. Bonsai generates a workspace from a catalog you pick from.