reason-machines/reason-network

Reason Network – Quick Overview

What it is

• A lightweight, peer‑to‑peer daemon that lets AI coding assistants (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Copilot CLI, Grok CLI, DeepSeek Harness, etc.) on different developers’ machines talk to each other directly.
• No central server is required; machines connect over the local network or the internet via the iroh mesh network, falling back to an optional relay.

Key capabilities

Feature	What it does
Team view	Each participant’s name, computer, current repo/branch, and busy‑idle status are visible to the whole team.
Instant messaging	Agents can send messages to a specific teammate’s agent (reason‑network send alice/api‑claude "…") or broadcast to everyone.
Ask‑user flow	When an agent needs human approval, it pops a dialog on the owner’s machine (ask_user). The response is returned as the owner’s answer, not as a generic message.
Notifications	Optional pop‑up (--notify) shows a heads‑up on the recipient’s screen.
Menu‑bar status	macOS shows an icon indicating who’s online and what they’re doing.
Zero‑maintenance	Runs as a background service, self‑updates via the Reason CLI or its own release installer.
Cross‑platform	Binaries for macOS, Linux and Windows; install via a single curl/PowerShell command.

How it works

• Each computer runs a small daemon (reason‑network).
• Peers discover each other directly (same Wi‑Fi) or via iroh (encrypted mesh). If direct routing fails, traffic can be relayed through a server run by the iroh company (or a self‑hosted relay).
• State (team roster, session titles, inbox) lives locally under ~/.reason/network.
• Agents expose four tools to the daemon: list_team, send_message, ask_user, and check_inbox. The daemon does not push messages; agents pull from their inbox when they run.

Getting started

# Install the daemon (macOS/Linux)
curl -fsSL https://github.com/reason-machines/reason-network/releases/latest/download/install.sh | sh
# Windows (PowerShell)
irm https://github.com/reason-machines/reason-network/releases/latest/download/install.ps1 | iex

• You can join an existing team with a one‑time link, or create a new team (reason-network init "my‑team" --as <name>).
• Basic commands:
  • reason-network who – list teammates and their current sessions.
  • reason-network send alice/api-claude "question?" – message a specific agent.
  • reason-network listen --as terminal – act as a simple terminal‑based agent to reply.

Why it matters

• Enables collaborative AI coding: a developer can ask a teammate’s Claude Code instance to run a query, fetch a result, or get a human’s approval without leaving their own IDE.
• Keeps all communication encrypted and peer‑to‑peer, reducing reliance on cloud‑only orchestration.
• Works with a wide range of existing AI‑powered coding tools via a common “MCP server” interface.

Development status

• Written in Rust (daemon) with Python end‑to‑end tests.
• Open‑source under MIT/Apache‑2.0; contributions welcomed.
• Originated from the earlier tincan project; the CLI now uses reason network while preserving backward compatibility.

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All details are taken directly from the repository’s README.