Leopold

Brief it like a teammate. It conducts Claude Code in your seat.

Leopold is an autonomous orchestration harness for Claude Code. You debate the work with it the way you already debate with Claude Code: goals, constraints, taste, what done means. That conversation becomes a durable brief. Then Leopold takes the seat and conducts Claude Code continuously, deciding the way you would, instead of stopping to ask you at every fork.

flowchart LR
    You([You · the composer]) -- "debate the mission" --> Brief[(The Brief<br/>mission · charter · plan)]
    Brief --> Leopold{{Leopold · the conductor}}
    Leopold -- "decides from your charter" --> CC[Claude Code · the orchestra]
    CC -- "status each cycle" --> Leopold
    Leopold -- "only when it must" --> Notify([Notifies you])
    classDef you fill:#5e60ce,stroke:#3a0ca3,color:#fff;
    classDef cond fill:#7400b8,stroke:#3a0ca3,color:#fff;
    class You,Notify you;
    class Leopold cond;

Why Leopold?

In Bugs Bunny's Long-Haired Hare (1949), Bugs takes the podium disguised as the great conductor Leopold and runs the whole orchestra with a wave of the baton. That is the job: you are the composer, Leopold is the conductor, Claude Code is the orchestra.

• Get started in minutes

  ---

  Install the skills and hooks, then brief your first mission and hand over the seat.

  Quickstart

• It decides like you

  ---

  A charter encodes your judgment so the run answers its own questions instead of pinging you.

  Decision Protocol

• Git stays locked

  ---

  Commit, push, and destructive commands are blocked by a hook, even in fully autonomous mode.

  Guardrails

• Built as a real harness

  ---

  Two tiers: an in-session engine that runs in plain Claude Code, and an SDK driver for unattended runs.

  Architecture

• The plan runs as code

  ---

  The brief compiles into a dynamic workflow: dependency waves, an adversarial verify panel per item, a live phase tree.

  Dynamic Workflows

The problem it solves

A normal Claude Code session is a conversation. It pauses at every decision: "approach A or B?", "should I commit?", "do the next item or stop?". That is the right default when a human is watching, and the wrong default when you want a session to run for an hour while you do something else.

The pauses come from three places, and each needs a different fix:

Cause	What it is	Leopold's lever
Safety defaults	commit/push/destructive ask first	kept locked (a hook)
No designated decider	"A or B" is a product call	the charter decides as you would
No continuity	a finished batch just stops	continuity picks up the next item

How it works, in one picture

flowchart TD
    subgraph P1["Phase 1 · Brief (you + Leopold)"]
        D[Debate the mission] --> A[(MISSION · CHARTER<br/>GUARDRAILS · PLAN)]
    end
    subgraph P2["Phase 2 · Run (Leopold conducts)"]
        A --> Pick[Pick next plan item]
        Pick --> Work[Claude Code does the work]
        Work --> Fork{Hit a fork?}
        Fork -- "reversible / charter-clear" --> Decide[Decide · log · continue]
        Fork -- "irreversible AND ambiguous" --> Esc[Stop · notify you]
        Decide --> Done{Plan done?}
        Done -- no --> Pick
        Done -- yes --> Finish([Notify · all staged for review])
    end
    classDef stop fill:#e63946,stroke:#9d0208,color:#fff;
    class Esc stop;

Ready? Start with the Quickstart, or read What Is a Harness to understand the bigger picture.