Your first week

This is the whole loop once, on a project with no history: plan a stage, work a sitting, ship, and ask the record what happened. Every transcript here was taken from a real run. Install first - Getting Started has the one line for your platform.

Day one: a project and a plan

init makes the record - one SQLite file in the platform’s data directory - and project add points it at a repository. The name is the directory’s; --name overrides.

$ rigger init
Created C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\lacodda\rigger\data\config.toml with the 'line' profile
Created C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\lacodda\rigger\data\profiles\line\rigger.db (schema version 27)
Next: rigger project add <path>

$ rigger project add C:\dev\sample
Recorded 'sample' at C:\dev\sample
  remote: https://github.com/acme/sample.git

A plan is a list of stages, and a stage is a version that will end in a tag. version add plans one with its tasks, and --week aims it at a week of the calendar:

$ rigger version add sample v0.1.0 --title "First light" --task "read a sheet" --task "write the report" --week 2026-W43
Added v0.1.0 to sample, with 2 tasks
  aimed at 2026-W43 - the week of 2026-10-23

$ rigger version add sample v0.2.0 --title "Charts" --task "draw a chart"
Added v0.2.0 to sample, with 1 task

What you decide and what only you can answer go into the record as you go, not into a notes file afterwards. note takes a kind - a decision, a finding, a pitfall, a question for the owner:

$ rigger note sample "Read sheets with one library, not two" --kind decision
Recorded a decision for sample

$ rigger note sample "Which file formats come first?" --kind question
Asked the owner about sample; it waits in the inbox until answered

Day two: a sitting

A coding assistant starts from the context packet - the stage being built, what waits for you, what happened lately - held to a token budget however long the history behind it grows:

$ rigger context sample
# sample

C:\dev\sample
https://github.com/acme/sample.git
Nothing shipped yet
2 versions planned, 3 tasks open

## Current stage: v0.1.0 · First light
- read a sheet
- write the report

## Waiting for the owner
- [2] Which file formats come first?

## Recent
- [1] 2026-10-07 · decision · Read sheets with one library, not two

(Any [id] above reads whole with `rigger event sample <id>`.)

rigger open sample starts the assistant in the project with that packet as its first message. Connected to the MCP server - the installer registers it - the assistant reads and writes the record itself; everything below is what it does through its tools, shown as the commands a person would type.

A session holds a sitting together: what is recorded between start and end belongs to it.

$ rigger session start sample
Session open on sample. Everything recorded now belongs to it.

$ rigger note sample "A merged cell is read as its first cell" --kind finding
Recorded a finding for sample

Tasks are closed by their id, which version show lists:

$ rigger version show sample
sample v0.1.0 · First light

aimed at   2026-W43 - releases on 2026-10-23
tasks      2 open of 2
  [1] new     read a sheet
  [2] new     write the report

$ rigger task status 1 done
Task 1 is now done (was new): read a sheet

$ rigger task status 2 done
Task 2 is now done (was new): write the report

Day three: a release

The plan does not decide what shipped - git does. Tag the release as you always would, and sync reads it: the tag closes the version, on the date of its commit, and the conventional commit messages since the last tag become the changelog.

$ git tag v0.1.0
$ rigger sync sample
sample:
  shipped    v0.1.0 on 2026-10-07
  read       2 changes from commit messages

The next sitting starts from one line, and the end of this one says what it held:

$ rigger note sample "Start the charts from the report's table" --kind next
Set the next step for sample; the next session starts from it

$ rigger session end sample
Session on sample closed, open since 2026-10-07T13:14:59Z.

recorded 1 finding
closed 2 tasks
next: Start the charts from the report's table
copied the database to C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\lacodda\rigger\data\profiles\line\rigger.v27-20261007-131500.bak

Write it into a diary with: rigger session end sample --diary <file>

The rest of the week: what the record answers

What waits on you, across every project at once - and the answer becomes a decision:

$ rigger inbox
1 question in 1 project

sample       [  2] 2026-10-07  Which file formats come first?

Answer one with: rigger resolve <project> <id> "<answer>"

$ rigger resolve sample 2 "CSV and XLSX; ODS later"
Answered [2]: Which file formats come first?
  the answer is recorded as a decision

The project’s own screen, for you rather than for the assistant:

$ rigger show sample
sample
Reads every spreadsheet you have

path       C:\dev\sample
remote     https://github.com/acme/sample.git

Last shipped v0.1.0 on 2026-10-07
1 version planned, 1 task open

Current stage: v0.2.0 · Charts
    draw a chart

Next step
  Start the charts from the report's table

Where a thing was said, and what went into a release:

$ rigger find sheet
sample       2026-10-07  decision  Read sheets with one library, not two
sample       2026-10-07  change    feat: read a sheet

$ rigger why sample v0.1.0
v0.1.0 · First light — shipped 2026-10-07
the work from the start of the record

2026-10-07  decision  Read sheets with one library, not two
2026-10-07  answered  Which file formats come first?
2026-10-07  finding   A merged cell is read as its first cell
2026-10-07  change    feat: read a sheet
2026-10-07  change    feat: write the report

And the calendar, comparing what was aimed at with what the tags say happened - this release came two weeks before its week:

$ rigger calendar --from 2026-W41 --weeks 4
         2026-W41*  2026-W42  2026-W43  2026-W44
sample   <v0.1.0

+ shipped as planned   < early   > slipped   ! overdue   * unplanned   · planned

sample   v0.1.0 — aimed at 2026-W43, 2 weeks early

On Monday, rigger week gathers the focus, what ships on Friday and what waits on you into one screen; rigger digest says what moved, five lines per project. On any day, rigger pick says which project to take up next, and why.

For a program rather than a person

Every command above takes --json and prints one JSON document, and each command’s page has a table of its fields - the JSON output contract a script or an editor can build on.

Notes you already keep by hand: move a hub into the record.
Several repositories at once: adopt.
At work, tasks are tickets across repositories: profiles and task cards.