Gears OS
A project intelligence system that serves as an operating system for AI-assisted software development, solving the critical problem of context drift in long-running engineering work.
The Challenge
Working with AI agents on complex, long-running software projects was fundamentally broken. Every new chat session, model switch, or return after a few days required complete re-onboarding: re-explaining the project scope, architecture decisions, coding standards, priorities, and previous work.
Context drift was constant. Different AI instances developed conflicting understandings of the same project. Important decisions were forgotten. Agents would confidently implement the wrong approach or duplicate work already completed. The lack of a shared, persistent project memory made reliable AI collaboration impossible at scale.
The Solution
We built Gears OS as a lightweight, file-based project intelligence system that functions as an operating system for AI agents. Key elements include:
- Structured Memory: .gears/ directory with context, memory, instructions, decisions, sessions, and artifacts
- Enforced Workflows: Mandatory read orders at session start and update requirements at session end
- Clean Handoffs: Session logs with "what happened" and "next session should" summaries
- Agent Coordination: Structured consults for complex sub-problems
- CLI Tools: Simple commands like gears hydrate and gears init for bootstrapping
The system lives entirely within the project as human-readable files, requiring no external tools or black-box memory.