Cairn — AI-Native Project Management

Cairn gives you and your AI agent a shared workspace of markdown files for managing projects and tasks. Statuses are the shared language. Any AI that can read files is ready to go.

Installation

npm install -g cairn-work
cairn onboard

cairn onboard creates ~/cairn/ with auto-generated context files (AGENTS.md and .cairn/planning.md) that agents read automatically.

Community

• Follow @letcairnwork on X
• Visit letcairn.work
• Submit issues
• Join the discussion

Core Commands

Workspace

• cairn status — Overview with task counts
• cairn my — Your assigned tasks
• cairn active — All in-progress tasks
• cairn doctor — Diagnose workspace health

Projects & Tasks

• cairn create project "Name" --description "..." --objective "..." — Create a project with charter
• cairn create task "Name" --project <slug> --description "..." --objective "..." — Create a task
• cairn list tasks [--status pending,in_progress] [--project slug] — List tasks with filters
• cairn search "keyword" — Find tasks by content

Task Workflow

• cairn start <task-slug> — Begin work (sets in_progress)
• cairn note <task-slug> "Progress update" — Add a status note
• cairn artifact <task-slug> "Artifact Name" — Create a linked deliverable
• cairn done <task-slug> — Finish work (moves to review or completed)
• cairn block <task-slug> "Reason" — Mark as blocked

Maintenance

• cairn update-skill — Refresh context files after CLI updates
• cairn upgrade — Update CLI to latest version

Workspace Structure

~/cairn/
  AGENTS.md                  # Agent context (auto-generated)
  .cairn/planning.md         # Planning guide (auto-generated)
  projects/
    project-slug/
      charter.md             # Why, success criteria, context
      artifacts/             # Deliverables (design docs, proposals, etc.)
      tasks/                 # Individual task markdown files
  inbox/                     # Ideas to triage
  memory/                    # Workspace memory

Statuses

pending → next_up → in_progress → review → completed (or blocked at any point)

Autonomy Levels

Set per-task to control how much the agent can do:

• propose — Agent plans only, finishes in review
• draft — Agent does work, you approve before shipping
• execute — Full autonomy, finishes as completed

Tips

• Run cairn onboard first — it sets up everything the agent needs.
• Use cairn my to see your current workload at a glance.
• Artifacts (cairn artifact) create linked deliverables stored with the project.
• All data is plain markdown with YAML frontmatter — version control friendly.