Panifex

Panifex (crustum/panifex, Crustum\Panifex) is the autonomous coding-agent backend: it reads your CakePHP codebase, edits files, runs tests, reviews pull requests, upgrades dependencies, and heals failed jobs. Safety boundaries are enforced in PHP, not by prompting.

Installation

composer require crustum/panifex
bin/cake plugin load Crustum/Panifex

Requirements: PHP >=8.2, CakePHP ^5.4. Verify with bin/cake coder health.

What it provides

• Setup — Getting started (install, verify, first session), Configuration (every Panifex.* key), First session (interactive agent in depth), Project setup (PANIFEX.md, memory, application map).
• Sessions — Headless runs (coder run for CI), Focused sessions (fix, explain, test, onboard), Code review (coder review plus coder respond), Upgrades (coder upgrade), Evals (coder eval), Self-healing (autonomous healer).
• Tools and extending — Tools (all 35), Extending (custom tools, agents, subagents, hooks, events, providers).
• Safety and connections — Safety (guards, database writes, injection shield), Chat connections (remote, Telegram, Slack, Rocket.Chat), Hosting connections (GitHub and GitLab, Redmine, Sentry, CI), MCP server (coding from any agent).
• Reference — Reference (every PANIFEX_* variable, utility commands, troubleshooting, limits).

Backend details live on their pages; generic harness concepts live under Harness.

Next steps

• Getting started — install, verify, first session
• Headless runs — the same agent for CI and cron
• Tools — the 35 built-in tools and extending them
• Safety — guards, allowlists, database writes