ThoughtDAG: local CLI/MCP that traces files back to agent-session turns
Lopsided_Scarcity979 · reddit · 2026-09-05
The developer behind ThoughtDAG (MIT-licensed, free and open source) shipped an update: the new Why CLI queries local agent-session history starting from a file, no desktop canvas required.
- Usage: npx thoughtdag why src/lib/api.ts finds matching turns in supported local agent transcripts and points back to the original question, answer, and tool trail
- It separates two kinds of evidence: Δ = an edit/write recorded in a tool call; ≈ = a candidate explanation recovered from the agent's answer, not a verified reason — useful when an agent claims it fixed something but the recorded operations say otherwise
- Exact phrase search and full-turn recall included; an optional stdio MCP server exposes four read-only tools (whycheck, whyfile, find, recallturn) that cannot modify the canvas or sessions
- The derived index stays local and CLI lookup requires no LLM call; if an agent calls the MCP tools, transcript content becomes visible to that agent, so mind your provider's data handling on private work
Still an early developer preview; missing history is not evidence no earlier decision existed. Repo: github.com/chenxiachan/thoughtdag
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