I’d estimate we’re ~6 months from most devs moving their code agents off of their laptops
For Those Who Know the Future of Engineering is Off Your Laptop
Your third-party, local and repo-scoped skills, agent plugins and instructions, skill dependencies, secrets (SSH keys, kubeconfigs, keystore, .env's etc) and your dirty codebases (not that kind), intelligently synced across your machines. Everything digital understood and managed by your coding agents 24/7.
This is not just a reproducible environment setup for you own linux/mac fleet, or an Obsidian vault architecture w/ custom plugins to replace Notion & Linear (yes, share with your team). It's THAT and also the be all end all evolving agent orchestration solution. And it's all free and open source! 🤯
The System
Each tool does one understandable job. Together, they give agents durable context, safe access, synchronized code, remote execution, and an operational path all the way to production.
Nine layers, one system
The layers describe responsibility, not product names. Every component can change without making the model meaningless.
Observe, triage, remediate, release, roll back, and recover.
Turn context and capabilities into repeatable delivery workflows.
Keep active codebases synchronized, recoverable, and ready for agents.
Package and distribute skills, plugins, CLIs, APIs, and dependencies.
Keep durable instructions, knowledge, memory, and dependencies legible.
Run and coordinate agents across machines without losing state.
Reproduce the machine, network, cluster, and runtime context.
Bind identities, authorities, credentials, and capabilities safely.
Understand the world, intent, systems, and constraints.
Just like the internet, the age of AI is the complete wild west.
That's why I'm building this. Downloading, sharing, managing, editing, and updating skills across your repositories, your Obsidian vault, and all those used to manage your fleet of local machines and laptops is a pain in the ass.
But then, you still need to manage plugins, your AGENTS.md, and other permissions and .toml setup across your machines. But they don't all have the same config! Some must have these secrets, some may not. The same skill might need to say something different on a different machine.
Git was designed for a pre-AI era. Worktrees are cumbersome. And in practice, your agents should all be working as if they were on the same machine.
Context Nine's suite of tools allows your code folder to stay in sync while you work, with conflicts duplicated and made easily greppable. Your task as an AI engineer is to know what machines your task needs to run on, and have enough of an understanding so as not to cause conflicts while working on the same branch across multiple machines. However, your machines should still be able to talk, communicate with each other, and use computer use when needed. I've found that having a spare Mac for computer use and a Linux machine for large-scale changes and a primary Mac that you orchestrate this all from is the best setup, although the more machines the merrier!
I built all of these tools and context systems because there simply wasn't a way to do all this. The way we work as engineers has fundamentally changed. And I believe the solution to that is a well-defined system based on your own file system with lots of Markdown files.
I can't believe I'm typing this, but try it for yourself, and there'll be no going back.
I'm a huge K3s fan, and so a lot of the included skills relate to how I interact with Kubernetes. I haven't published everything yet publicly, but as things get more polished, I will make them available. This repo allows me to send a voice note on my phone and have my Linux worker build and deploy an entire tested application on Kubernetes live behind Cloudflare on my existing cheap cluster hosted on Hetzner while using Computer Use on my Mac Air.
To get things done without me being there. If it can be done on a computer, it can be done with a voice note. I use VoiceInk (I know, not WhisperFlow, ooohhh) with ElevenLabs, btw. V2/V3 is just so good at capturing technical terms.
Since I'm a Kubernetes fan, my context setup involves Helm charts and deployments. It can triage Grafana alerts into governed incidents, publish PR files and readable HTML or Markdown through Publisher, run evidence-driven agents, and manage your secrets per repository with global secrets propagated into your working repositories.
I've thought a lot about all of these systems and how they work together. So that modern engineers can build at speeds never before possible. This is Context Nine.
P.S. It's also a work in progress! I want your thoughts, contributions (or just prompts) and really just to hang out would be cool. Join the Discord. Join the WhatsApp. Or let's grab a coffee if you're in Cape Town.
Frequently asked questions
Is Context Nine one app?
No. It is one system made from small open-source tools that share contracts, context, and a nine-layer model. Use only the parts you need.
Does it require Kubernetes?
No. The Vault, skills, Secret Bindings, and synchronization tools are useful on ordinary Macs and Linux machines. Kubernetes is the strongest path for always-on workers and repeatable delivery.
Does Context Nine store my secrets?
Secret Bindings maps requirements to the providers that already own your values. It is designed to deliver narrow capabilities without spraying plaintext into agents, repositories, or logs.
Can a team use the Vault?
Yes. The public Vault stays local-first and Markdown-based, while its boundaries, templates, and plugins can be shared with a team.
Is it finished?
No. It is a work in progress, built in the open. Thoughts, contributions, prompts, and conversations are welcome.
Install the Context Nine System
Never keep your laptop lid half open ever again.
Build with Context Nine.
Questions, ideas, contributions, or a strange agent workflow you want to make less fragile?
Get in touch