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Learn
QuickstartInstall cairnYour first cairn sessionPlan and resume
ConceptsWhat cairn isThe task graphTasks, observations, and handoffsPlans, phases, and the frontierThe current-task pointerEvents, projection, and reconcileReads, writes, and capabilitiesThe cairn-method
Reference
Tools & Query LanguageMCP toolsThe TQ query languageBuilt-in and user-defined viewsEdges, statuses, and fields
Commands & ServingSlash commandsServing over MCP

Quickstart

The cairn tutorial: install the extension, run the bootstrap-observe-handoff loop, then build a small phase graph you plan in and resume into.

This is the tutorial track for a person setting cairn up and running it through an agent: the linear path from an empty install to a plan you can resume from a clean session. cairn keeps that plan in a durable task graph outside the conversation, so a context reset reloads it instead of losing it.

Read these in order. Each page builds on the one before it.

  • Install cairn — add cairn to kli declaratively or at runtime, serve it to any MCP client, and confirm the tool surface is live.
  • Your first cairn session — run the bootstrap-observe-handoff loop once, end to end, and learn what each returned string means.
  • Plan and resume — fork phases, order them with depends-on, ask the frontier what is ready, complete a phase, and bootstrap back into the plan.

When you have run the loop and want to understand why the graph behaves as it does, Concepts explains the task graph, the current pointer, the event log, and the capability boundary. The full surface lives in the Reference: the fourteen MCP tools, the TQ query language, the built-in views, and the closed edge, status, and field enums.