cya — console-native assistant for local work

cya lets you express intent in natural language from your terminal and receive safe, explainable, context-aware help.

It is the CLI surface for the capabilities domain. It owns orchestration, the user experience, and the safety layer. It talks to llm-connect only through a stable adapter boundary and keeps all memory under explicit user-controlled ports (implemented by phase-memory).

Status

This is the first narrow MVP slice (CYA-WP-0001). The tool is already usable after pip install -e .:

• cya "your request in plain English"
• cya --explain-context "..." — shows exactly what local context would be sent
• Automatic rule-based risk classification with mandatory confirmation for anything destructive, privileged, mass-edit, or network-affecting
• All LLM interaction flows through a documented LLMAdapter seam (currently a deterministic fake; ready for real llm-connect)

Installation (development)

git clone <this-repo>
cd can-you-assist
pip install -e .
cya --help

Usage examples

# Normal request (safe path)
cya "show me the recent git history for this repo"

# Risky request — will show classification + require explicit confirmation
cya "delete every log file older than 30 days in this tree"

# See exactly what context would be collected and sent
cya --explain-context "explain the changes in the last commit"

The output includes a structured suggestion, rationale, and (when relevant) a clear preview + confirmation prompt. Nothing executes without your explicit yes.

Safety (core product behavior)

• Genuine rule-based assessment is the primary mechanism.
• Results are available to the model.
• Anything above "safe" produces a preview and blocks until you confirm in the launching terminal.
• No autonomous execution in this slice.

See the risk classifier tests and workplan T03 for the exact rules and invariants.

Architecture & boundaries (important)

• can-you-assist (this repo): CLI, context collection, safety, orchestration.
• llm-connect: Provider access, config, token counting, structured responses. All interaction goes through cya/llm/adapter.py (LLMAdapter Protocol).
• phase-memory: Durable, user-controlled memory. This slice has only strictly minimal explicit no-op ports (see cya/memory/__init__.py).

See workplans/CYA-WP-0001-console-native-mvp.md for the full task breakdown, decisions, and integration guide.

Development

pip install -e .
pytest tests/ -q
cya "..."   # manual verification

License

MIT (see LICENSE).

Workplan & coordination

• Workplan: workplans/CYA-WP-0001-console-native-mvp.md
• State Hub workstream: repo-integration-can-you-assist
• Operator reminder after changes: cd ~/state-hub && make fix-consistency REPO=can-you-assist