werk

A structural dynamics engine for the gap between desire and reality.

You want things. You have a reality. The gap between them is a tension — and tensions, when held honestly, drive resolution.

werk computes 13 structural dynamics from the history of your declared tensions. Not vibes. Not sentiment. Structural truth, computed from your own recorded actions over time.

Then it hands those dynamics to an AI agent — and the agent serves your declared intentions. Not the reverse.

Why Not a Task List?

Task lists track sequences of steps. werk tracks what you want and what is real. The difference matters.

When you update a reality or refine a desire, that mutation is a record of how your thinking changed. Over time, the mutation history becomes a legible account of how you approached your work: what shifted, when, and what you chose to do about it. More honest than a journal. More useful than a backlog.

People do not need particular sequences of steps. They need the continuous attainment of genuinely held desired outcomes. LLMs make this possible in a new way: given a declared tension and its structural context, an agent can propose and execute actions toward the desired state. The human holds the creative tension. The agent actuates toward it. The human does not need to know the steps. They need to know what they want and what is true right now.

This is individual alignment made operational. Not through fine-tuning or system prompts, but through structure. Your tensions are the alignment data.

The Instrument

  ◇ Ship a tool that 1000 people use weekly            ○○●●○●● ▸
  ◆ Complete a 50-mile ultramarathon                    ○○○○●●●
  ◇ Be engaged by end of year                           ○○○○○○○
  ◈ Have 48k in liquid savings                          ●○●○●○●
  ◉ Call mom every Sunday                               ●●●●●●●

A terminal interface built on descent — you navigate by going deeper into what matters, not by scanning dashboards. Space opens the Gaze: desire and reality facing each other, children below, dynamics computed. The instrument holds the structure of your work and reveals the shape of your effort.

13 Structural Dynamics

The Agent

Press @ on any tension. The agent receives the full structural context — all 13 dynamics, children, history — and responds within scope. It proposes structured mutations: update reality, add children, resolve, set horizon. You review each one. Accept or reject. The agent is subordinate.

This is individual alignment made concrete. Not through fine-tuning or system prompts, but through structure. Your tensions are the alignment data. The agent serves them.

The Daimon

werk watch runs in the background. When neglect sets in, when conflict emerges, when oscillation spikes, when a horizon passes — the daimon notices and stores an observation. Next time you open the instrument: "3 insights waiting."

Not a notification. Not an alert. A quiet observation waiting for you to return.

The Philosophy

The alchemist creates gold — his works in the world, and his soul refined by the process. The Great Work is bringing every part of your life into coherence with every other. werk is the operative instrument for that process.

Like the alchemist's folio — the notebook where experiments are recorded, patterns tracked, and the structure of effort made visible — werk makes itself a vehicle for the practitioner's experiments.

Install

git clone https://github.com/bierlingm/werk && cargo install --path werk/werk-cli
werk init && werk

Requires Rust nightly (edition 2024). Built on sd-core: 652 tests, zero unsafe code.