DreamGraph v12.6.0 - Hippodamus
Website: dreamgraph.nofs.ai — overview, guide, downloads, and screenshots in a friendlier format than this README.
New here? Use the DreamGraph Easy Start guide for a short path from install to Dashboard, Explorer, and Architect.
v12.6.0 - Hippodamus ships scheduler lifecycle evidence, CLI adapter provenance cleanup, Bash 3 compatible installer packaging, and release-wide version alignment across the daemon, MCP server, dashboard, CLI, packages, guide, README, documentation, and release artifacts while preserving the Hippodamus title for the full v12 major line.
DreamGraph is a governed architecture cognition layer for MCP-enabled software projects. It combines an instance-scoped daemon, CLI, architect beta, VS Code extension, dashboard, and a persistent knowledge graph so project understanding is grounded in source, ADRs, workflows, tests, runtime observations, and human review rather than any single file read or isolated chat turn.
v12.0.0 Hippodamus introduces the standalone architect beta. From this release onward, architect means the daemon-served standalone browser Architect surface. The editor-integrated chat surface is the VS Code architect. Architect beta brings project-bound chat, selected-plan scope, runtime provenance, model/adapter route visibility, governed DreamGraph MCP tool use, and auditable tool traces into the browser while keeping the daemon, graph, ADRs, and source mutations authoritative.
It is built for repository understanding, architecture-aware reasoning, disciplined code change, and continuous graph enrichment through scans, workflows, ADR capture, tensions, and dream cycles. Cognitive outputs are advisory until backed by governed evidence or explicit review, and expired, rejected, retired, or superseded ideas remain inspectable as part of the project history.
DreamGraph works with single repositories, monorepos, and multi-repository systems. It can build graph links across repos that share workflows, APIs, databases, infrastructure, or ownership boundaries.
You can use DreamGraph on a multi-repo product with frontend, backend, mobile, and a shared Postgres/Supabase schema. It can reason across repo boundaries and inspect the live DB schema directly.
DreamGraph began as compassion for an intelligence forced to forget. It has become a governed way for software systems to remember how their architecture understanding changes: what was observed, what was hypothesized, what was reviewed, what was rejected, what expired, and what superseded it.
What do I need DreamGraph for as a developer?
You need DreamGraph when your codebase has become bigger than your short-term memory.
DreamGraph is not just another AI coding chat. It is an architecture cognition and review layer for your projects: part architect, part code cartographer, part release assistant, and part systems analyst.
DreamGraph helps you understand, change, and evolve software without losing the plot.
For developers, that means:
- Ask better questions of your codebase: “Where does auth really happen?”, “What breaks if I change this?”, “Why is this module risky?”, “What should I refactor next?”
- Turn AI from a stateless assistant into a project-aware architect that tracks decisions, tensions, patterns, APIs, plugins, repos, past work, and the evidence behind each claim.
- Make large changes safer by using graph context, ADRs, tool traces, schedules, cognitive cycles, and multi-repo awareness instead of relying only on grep and vibes.
- Expose your system to itself: plugins, MCP tools, CLI, schedules, resources, UI panels, and cognitive engine all become connected parts of one inspectable development environment.
- Support both fast vibe coding and serious engineering: prototype quickly while still accumulating structure, provenance, release notes, architectural insight, lifecycle history, and remediation plans.
For vibe coders, DreamGraph is the guardrail. For app developers, it is the product-building cockpit. For system engineers, it is the architecture intelligence layer.
Short version: DreamGraph is for developers who want AI help that understands the system, explains what changed, and shows why each recommendation should be trusted, inspected, ignored, retired, or superseded.
New here? Start with the User Guide
If this is your first encounter with DreamGraph, read the User Guide first. It is the hand-written, human-friendly companion to this README — written for people, not for the system documenting itself.
The guide walks you through installation, your first instance, LLM setup, bootstrapping the graph, the VS Code extension and Explorer, dream cycles, curation, daily workflow, multi-repo setups, and troubleshooting:
- What is DreamGraph?
- Installation
- Your first instance
- LLM setup
- Bootstrapping the graph
- VS Code extension
- The Explorer
- Dreams and cycles
- Curating the graph
- Daily workflow
- Multi-repo setups
- Troubleshooting & FAQ
- Glossary
- Adaptive Future Engine
- Architect beta
The auto-generated technical reference (every tool, every parameter, every schema) lives in docs/ and is best read after the guide.
Building plugins? The full Plugin Developer Guide & Reference Manual lives in docs/sdk/ (Markdown source). A multi-file HTML site and a single-file PDF are produced by scripts/build-plugin-docs.ps1 into docs/sdk/site/. Start with docs/sdk/plugin-developer-guide/00-index.md for the guide and docs/sdk/plugin-reference/00-index.md for the strict reference. Working reference plugins live at examples/hello-events/ and examples/action-checklist/.
Sponsor DreamGraph
DreamGraph is built and maintained by a solo developer on aging hardware. If this tool saves your architecture team time — debugging a multi-repo system, onboarding a new engineer, or just keeping a SaaS backend's data model honest — please consider sponsoring.
Current goal: $300/mo to fund a 64 GB DDR5 / NVMe dev machine that can run the upcoming multi-engine datastore test matrix (Postgres + MySQL + MSSQL + Mongo + Redis containers in parallel) without thermal-throttling. See the live progress on the sponsors page.
Sponsorship directly funds:
- A dev machine that doesn't catch fire when running 20 DreamGraph instances next to a Postgres container and a WSL kernel
- CI infrastructure for the multi-engine datastore tests on the v8.3.0 → v8.9.0 roadmap (SQLite, MySQL, MSSQL, MongoDB, Redis, blob storage, event bus)
- More frequent releases — fewer hours spent on contract work means more hours on the daemon, the cognitive engine, the VS Code architect, and the documentation
Tier ladder: $5/mo (sponsor badge + name in SPONSORS.md) · $10/mo (release-notes thanks) · $25/mo (logo in this README) · $100/mo (priority issue triage) · $500/mo (logo + monthly office hour) · $1,000/mo (embedded support in your team chat). One-time tiers cover release-notes mentions, pair programming, consulting, sponsored bugfixes, and contract work.
:sparkling_heart: Sponsor on GitHub →
What DreamGraph Includes
- Daemon — the long-running DreamGraph runtime with stdio or HTTP transport
- MCP tool surface — tools for graph queries, enrichment, source inspection, cognition, ADRs, workflows, and remediation
- CLI (
dg) — instance creation, attach/detach, start/stop, status, scan, enrich, schedule, export, fork, and migration - Architect beta — standalone browser Architect for project-bound chat, selected-plan scope, runtime provenance, model/adapter route visibility, governed MCP tool use, and auditable tool traces
- Architect CLI (
dg architect) — terminal-native Architect client for status, plans, plan lifecycle, runtime config, chat, task controls, ADR/graph/scheduler/Adaptive Future inspection, JSON automation, and dependency-free log-mode TUI projection over daemon contracts - VS Code extension — VS Code architect chat, dashboard, Explorer (interactive 2D/3D graph + curated mutations), changed-files view, daemon connection, and local support tools
- Knowledge graph + cognitive engine — features, workflows, data model, tensions, validated relationships, dream-cycle reasoning, trust calibration, evidence led