Ruflo

Ruflo does not replace the coding agent; it sits around it. After ruflo init, Claude Code keeps running as usual, and hooks plus the Ruflo MCP server route tasks, fetch stored patterns and spawn helper agents in the background. In Codex mode the guide splits the roles explicitly: Ruflo tracks state and memory, Codex writes code and runs commands.

Multi-agent work is organised as swarms with a chosen topology (hierarchical, mesh, ring, star, hybrid or adaptive). For coding tasks the guide recommends a hierarchical swarm of at most eight agents with a single coordinator that checks each output against the goal. The hive-mind mode adds queen agents that direct typed workers and use a consensus algorithm for shared decisions. Ruflo can also switch on Claude Code's experimental Agent Teams feature and attach its own hooks to teammate-idle and task-completed events.

State lives on disk: AgentDB with an HNSW index, a sql.js SQLite database (.swarm/memory.db) and local ONNX embeddings, with collective memory types that carry different expiry times. A bridge syncs Claude Code's auto-memory files with AgentDB. Encryption at rest for sessions and memory is opt-in via CLAUDE_FLOW_ENCRYPT_AT_REST=1.

Ruflo runs inside Claude Code or Codex, so the host agent's own permission prompts are the main approval point; the prerequisites section offers claude --dangerously-skip-permissions as an optional step, which turns those prompts off. Inside Ruflo, the claims system lets a person claim, release or hand off a task that an agent was working on, and issues rebalance --dry-run previews reassignment before applying it. The metaharness harness-mint skill is dry-run by default and writes only with --confirm. No approval queue or pause/resume UI for swarms is described in the README, STATUS page or user guide.

npx ruflo@latest init wizard

# Set up Ruflo in the current project (writes CLAUDE.md, hooks, .claude-flow/)
npx ruflo@latest init

# Register the MCP server with Claude Code (the key is still named claude-flow)
claude mcp add claude-flow -- npx -y ruflo@latest mcp start
claude mcp list

# Start a hierarchical swarm and a coder agent from the CLI
npx ruflo@latest swarm init --topology hierarchical --max-agents 8
npx ruflo@latest agent spawn -t coder --name api-worker

# Search stored patterns before a task
npx ruflo@latest memory search --query "auth patterns"

# Codex users: write AGENTS.md and register MCP with codex instead
npx ruflo@latest init --codex

• Requires Node.js 20+ and npm 9+ (or pnpm/bun); the guide says Claude Code must be installed before Ruflo.
• Two install paths behave differently: Claude Code plugins add slash commands and agent definitions only, with no hooks, and only ruflo-core registers an MCP server (its tools are prefixed mcp__plugin_ruflo-core_ruflo__). The CLI install (npx ruflo init) gives the full setup.
• The default npm install is about 340MB because of ML/embedding dependencies; npm install -g ruflo@latest --omit=optional installs the core CLI only (about 45MB).
• The curl ... | bash installer needs a POSIX shell; on native Windows use the npx command.
• Many docs and package names still use the old claude-flow name (@claude-flow/codex, npx claude-flow@latest federation ..., MCP key claude-flow).

Yes. The README states that Claude Flow is now Ruflo. The npm package is ruflo, but several packages, commands and the MCP server key still use the claude-flow name.

It runs as an MCP server for Claude Code and Codex. For A2A, the federation plugin publishes A2A Agent Cards for discovery but does not implement A2A tasks or messaging. No AG-UI support was found.

Claude Code (plugins, hooks and MCP server) and OpenAI Codex CLI (init --codex, MCP registered with codex mcp add). A metaharness skill can scaffold configs for other hosts, but that is a separate scaffolding step, not a Ruflo integration.

The code is MIT licensed. The user guide also describes Flow Nexus, a cloud platform that needs a sign-up and API key, and no pricing page was found, so the pricing model is recorded as unknown.

Plugins add slash commands and agent definitions without touching your workspace and without hooks. The CLI install writes CLAUDE.md, hooks, helpers and settings and registers the full MCP server.