Axis is a coordination layer for engineering teams where multiple developers each run their own AI coding agent — Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Windsurf, Antigravity, Gemini CLI — against the same repository at the same time. Without coordination, these agents collide: two agents claim the same feature, edit the same file, and the one that finishes last wins. Axis eliminates that by giving every agent a shared job board and per-file locks so conflicts surface before work happens, not after a broken merge.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/virsanghavi/axis/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
The Problem Axis Solves
Modern AI-assisted development increasingly means parallel sessions. One developer opens Claude Code, their teammate opens Cursor, and a third uses Windsurf — all targeting the same codebase, same sprint, same files. Git reconciles the result post-hoc, but by then both agents have done redundant or conflicting work. Axis moves that collision detection to the moment an agent claims a task, not when it tries to merge. The coordination layer is simple by design: a job board for intent, file locks for safety, and a shared notepad for ambient context. Agents talk to Axis through MCP — the same protocol they already use with tools — so there is nothing new to learn and no plugin to install per IDE.Core Primitives
Shared Job Board — A central atomic queue where one agent posts a task and another claims it. Claims run throughSELECT ... FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED, so two agents racing for the same job cannot both win. Jobs support priorities (low, medium, high, critical) and dependency chains, so work can be sequenced across agents without a human bottleneck.
Per-File Advisory Locks — Before any agent edits a file, it calls propose_file_access. Axis records the file’s content fingerprint at grant time so the agent can verify nothing changed before writing (verify_file_lock), or use guarded_write to let the server perform the write only if the lock is still valid and the file is unchanged. If a second agent requests the same file, it receives REQUIRES_ORCHESTRATION along with who holds the lock, why, and when it expires — actionable information, not a bare rejection.
Shared Notepad (Live Context) — update_shared_context appends attributed notes to a project-wide scratchpad. Coordination tool responses carry an ambient “team activity” trailer containing everything other agents logged since your last call, so there is no need to poll.
Open-Core Model
Axis is open-core under AGPL-3.0. The free coordination tier — job board, file locking, shared notepad, sessions, and project soul — has no per-seat cost and no rate limit on coordination calls. It is just state; it costs nothing to run. The paid hosted intelligence tier — vector + full-text + trigramsearch_codebase fused and LLM-reranked, cited multi-hop deep_search, incremental codebase indexing, the live dashboard, and the managed backend — lives at useaxis.dev. The local server’s search_codebase answers from ripgrep plus a keyword ranker (no index needed); a Pro key blends hosted results in when they arrive within budget.
Connecting to Axis
Hosted MCP endpoint (recommended):https://useaxis.dev/api/mcp. Zero install, zero updates — new tools land server-side. Authenticate via OAuth (browser login, no key to paste) or a Bearer API key.
Local npm package: @virsanghavi/axis-server — the full stdio MCP server shipped as a package. For contributing to Axis or using it fully offline.
Python SDK: virsanghavi-axis — the Python surface for the same coordination primitives.
Axis vs. Claude Code Agent Teams
For solo developers on a single machine, Claude Code’s built-in Agent Teams is free, native, and better for that use case. Axis is for when the collisions stop being yours.
| Scenario | Use |
|---|---|
| One developer, one machine, multiple Claude Code agents | Claude Code Agent Teams |
| Multiple developers or multiple agent vendors on the same repo | Axis |
| Cross-machine parallel sprints with load-balanced job pickup | Axis |
Explore
Quickstart
Connect your first agent in five minutes using the hosted MCP endpoint.
Connecting Agents
Setup instructions for Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Codex, and more.
Core Features
Deep dive into the job board, file locks, and live notepad.
MCP Tools
Full reference for all 28 tools exposed by the Axis MCP server.