keel

# KEEL

**The structural backbone. First thing laid down. Everything builds on it.**

KEEL is a zero-install, files-only development framework for AI coding agents. No CLI. No package manager. No update treadmill. Copy the files, start building.

## Why KEEL Exists

AI coding agents degrade over long sessions. As the context window fills up, output quality drifts — instructions get missed, code gets sloppy, details get lost. This is context rot, and it's the single biggest reliability problem in AI-assisted development.

KEEL solves it with files.

The framework IS the files. A `CLAUDE.md` that contains every instruction your AI agent needs, and a `docs/` directory that holds project state as human-readable markdown. When you clear context and start a new session, the agent reads the files and picks up exactly where it left off. No state is lost because no state lived in memory — it was always on disk.

No runtime. No dependencies. No config. If your agent can read markdown, KEEL works.

## Quick Start

```bash
git clone https://github.com/diydigitaldreams/keel.git
cp -r keel/template/.cursor your-project/.cursor
cp -r keel/template/docs your-project/docs
```

Or use the setup script:

```bash
git clone https://github.com/diydigitaldreams/keel.git
./keel/setup.sh /path/to/your-project
```

Then open your AI coding agent and say:

> "Let's scope this project."

KEEL takes it from there.

## How It Works

Three modes. No ceremony.

```
SCOPE  →  Interview, research, spec out what we're building
BUILD  →  Plan atomic tasks, execute, commit each one
SHIP   →  Verify success criteria, log, advance to next phase

Repeat BUILD → SHIP for each phase until the project is done.
```

Context rot is eliminated by clearing context between phases. Each phase gets its own directory with only the files that phase needs. Heavy thinking — research, planning, architectural decisions — happens once and gets written to disk. Every future context window inherits that work by reading the