Architecture

Nori CLI is a harness: it never implements an agent. Every agent is an external subprocess speaking the Agent Client Protocol, and the workspace is organized so that rule is structural, not aspirational.

┌ layer 2 · frontends ────────────────────────────┐
│  nori-cli (the binary)      nori-tui (terminal) │
└───────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┘
┌ layer 1 · runtime ▼─────────────────────────────┐
│  nori-harness (sessions, transcripts, undo,     │
│  hooks)             nori-config (~/.nori/cli)   │
└───────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┘
┌ layer 0 · leaves  ▼─────────────────────────────┐
│  nori-acp-host      nori-protocol               │
│  mock-acp-agent (conformance testing)           │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Rules that hold the shape: dependencies point strictly downward; the TUI never talks to nori-acp-host directly (everything flows through harness events); nothing below layer 2 knows a terminal exists; no cargo feature may move a responsibility between crates.

The ecosystem crates

Layer 0 is being groomed for crates.io:

• nori-acp-host — the host side of ACP as a standalone library: agent registry, subprocess spawning, JSON-RPC connection, permission plumbing.
• nori-protocol — the event vocabulary on top of the ACP schema.
• mock-acp-agent — a scriptable agent for conformance-testing hosts and agents.

The session transcript format is a stable, documented contract for third-party tools (JSONL, one file per session under ~/.nori/cli/transcripts/).

Fork heritage

The workspace began as a fork of OpenAI Codex. Crates prefixed codex-* are inherited (sandboxing, login, protocol vocabulary, utilities) and get renamed to nori-* as they’re adopted; upstream syncing has ended, so inherited crates shrink or disappear over time.