Cyclops

What is Cyclops?

Cyclops lives alongside your code, in the best IDE provider there is - JetBrains! When I built Cyclops the goal was to blend the incredible power of a modern day IDE with a new workflow I had in mind. There are a lot of great projects out there helping to develop better workflows. This is the one I built for myself and that I want to share with others.

You describe what you want in (mostly) natural language and the Agents in the app support you along the way. I say (mostly) because, as of mid-2026, these coding Agents are not capable of doing amazing things with only natural language. They are only capable of doing things.

So the idea is you can use your technical expertise to guide AI Agents so that you and the Agent together, can do amazing things.

Think of Cyclops as a place where you can:

1. Wrangle your thoughts.
2. Have Agents Research your questions and keep Reports in one place.
3. Either manually, or automatically, dispatch Agents to work in your code.

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The Harness

I have had the most success when context that's being passed to an AI Agent is refined through several iterations. In Cyclops, the workflow looks something like this:

You might be wondering, where's the Reviewer? Good question. It's something I plan on implementing in the future.

Installation

Cyclops has two dependencies in order to be used. The first is a subscription to codex, claude, or gemini. Cyclops currently leverages these "agentic coding harnesses" to work autonomously in your code, similar to how you do it now. To get started, make sure you have a subscription or two, as the free tiers of these apps are either extremely limited or do not support CLI usage. Once your subscription is set up, make sure to run the command manually for your provider in the project once so you can make the project a trusted project. If you don't do this, you'll get an error from Cyclops containing the text, "...Not inside a trusted directory...".

The app comes pre-loaded with the the command arguments to allow the agents to run autonomously. You can review these on the AI Providers & Models plugin settings page. Make sure you understand these command arguments, and the permissions they grant Cyclops before using AI tools like Cyclops.

The second dependency is the beads (bd) issue tracker. If you don't already have beads installed, you can follow their installation instructions to install it on your system. Each bead represents a unit of work for an agent to pick up and execute, so they're central to the app.

After beads is installed, you'll need to install Cyclops from the Jetbrains plugin store, which you can navigate to in your IDE by navigating to: Settings -> Plugins -> Marketplace and searching for Cyclops. Select Cyclops and click Install. Once it's installed, you should restart the IDE for the changes to take effect.

After you restart, you should see the Cyclops icon in your IDE, usually in the bottom-left Tool Window. My personal preference is to move it to the top-right Tool Window if I'm keeping it docked, otherwise I just undock it and leave it as its own window.

I recommend you also go to the Cyclops plugin Settings, which is easily accessible from within Cyclops itself by clicking the Plugin Settings button in the top-right of the app. Click on the Beads Settings page, and confirm that the bd executable is correctly assigned. If it's not, you'll want to select it by navigating to where beads was installed, typically:

• Linux

  /usr/local/bin/bd

  $HOME/.local/bin/bd

• Windows

  %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\bd\bd.exe

Once you've got the bd executable assigned, you can click the Test button, and you should see a successful test result. Congrats, you're ready to use Cyclops!

Cyclops is a JetBrains IDE plugin developed by Joseph Ferrara. This policy explains what data Cyclops handles and how.

What Cyclops Does Not Do

Cyclops does not operate its own servers, AI backend, or analytics infrastructure. It does not collect, transmit, or store any data on systems controlled by the Cyclops developer. There is no telemetry, usage tracking, crash reporting, or account system.

Data Transmitted to AI Providers

Cyclops launches locally installed AI command-line tools — such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex CLI, or Antigravity CLI — to perform research, planning, implementation, and related coding workflows.

When you use an AI feature, prompts sent to the configured CLI may include:

• Issue titles, descriptions, and status information
• Research requests and report content
• File paths and branch names from your project
• Command output from local tools
• Other project context needed to complete the requested workflow

This data is transmitted directly from your machine to the AI provider by the CLI you have installed and configured. Cyclops does not proxy, intercept, or store any traffic between the CLI and its provider.

Your Control

AI features in Cyclops are disabled by default. Before any data is sent to an AI provider, you must explicitly accept the AI Provider Notice in Settings. You can revoke this acceptance at any time, which immediately disables all AI features.

You choose which AI CLI to install, which provider account to use, and how that CLI is configured. Processing of your data by the AI provider is governed entirely by that provider's terms of service and privacy policy, not by Cyclops.

Local Data Storage

Cyclops stores your plugin preferences, AI Provider Notice acceptance status, and run history locally on your machine using the JetBrains IDE settings infrastructure. This data is not transmitted anywhere.

Third-Party Services

Cyclops does not integrate with any third-party services beyond the AI CLIs you choose to configure. It does not embed analytics libraries, advertising SDKs, or external tracking scripts.

Changes to This Policy

If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this URL with a revised date.

Contact

For questions about this policy, contact [email protected].

Sketches

Sketches are the place where you keep your ideas. These ideas may or may not make it into your application. They might be reminders. They might be new requirements. They might be opportunities for you to learn.

• You can Tag your Sketches, and give them a color.
• You can Archive old or completed Sketches.
• You can search Sketches and filter by Tags.
• You can dispatch Sketches to a Researcher for further refinement.
• You can convert a Sketch directly into a beads issue.

Try It Out

Unsure if something is possible? Can't remember how a part of the code works anymore? Sketch it out and send it to the Researcher.

Put multiple features you want in a Sketch and then send it to the Planner. The Planner will break the work down into separate pieces, avoiding context bloat and keeping concern separated.

Research

Research is the place where you figure things out. It's the place where context goes from wide and scatter-shot, to specific and actionable.

• The Researcher takes your instructions and compiles information for you to review.
• The Planner can take info straight from a Sketch or from a Researcher and develop a context-rich implementation plan. They also break work down into related and unrelated tasks, and create dependencies between beads if needed.
• The Critic reviews the Planners work and determines if it's ready to be implemented; they can Pass a plan, Amend a plan, or Fail a plan.

Try It Out

If you sent a Sketch to the Researcher, you'll see the Report land here. Try Pinning it, Shelving it, or Archiving it. Research Reports come in three flavors: Researcher, Planner, Critic. Each has their own lightweight set of instructions that help them achieve their goals.

Have a Researcher write a report for you. If it mentions specific parts of your code you'll be able to click a link and get to that exact spot in your JetBrains IDE.

Issues

Cyclops is powered by beads (bd), a Dolt-powered issue tracker designed for AI-supervised coding workflows.

The following Statuses are available for use:

• Planning
• Open
• Ready for Work
• In Progress
• Deferred
• Blocked
• Needs Review
• Unshipped
• Closed

Try It Out

When no Automations are configured, you can manually send Issues to different models to work on.

In Automation mode, come visit the Issues tab when a Critic passes a plan, and watch it moves from Ready for Work to In Progress.

Agents

It's difficult to manage Agents, as they can live in many places on your machine. This page is meant to be a view into the common places where Agents are installed. You configure where the app looks and what's Authoritative in the Agents & Skills plugin settings.

You can Authorize Agents and Acknowledge Changes to more easily see which Agents you're aware of, and what their state is.

Try It Out

Visit the Agents page and you'll be able to see the Cyclops agent instructions. If you have your own Agents, and they're configured in the Settings page, you'll see your Agents here as well.

Skills

Like Agents, Skills can also live in many different places on your machine. This page is meant to be a view into the common places where Skills are installed. You configure where the app looks and what's Authoritative in the Agents & Skills plugin settings.

You can Authorize Skills and Acknowledge Changes to more easily see which Skills you're aware of, and what their state is.

Try It Out

Visit the Agents page and you'll be able to see the Cyclops agent instructions. If you have your own Agents, and they're configured in the Settings page, you'll see your Agents here as well.

Cyclopes

Cyclopes is the plural form of Cyclops. This is the place where you can see processes that are running or have completed. You get metadata about each process on this page as well.

Try It Out

While a process is running, come visit the Cyclopes page and you'll see it processing. You can cancel the process by using the Cancel Job context action, or clicking the corresponding button.

Product

After your code is released to the base-branch, the Shipper is responsible for updating the release notes. This allows you to get a snapshot of changes which makes it much easier to write release notes for your product.

If you're not using Automations, you can add Release notes individually, exactly as you want, or just have an LLM refine a blob of text into Release Notes for you.

Try It Out

Once the Shipper moves an item from Unshipped to Closed, watch the Product page get update in real-time.

Just did some manual work? Get a text blob, paste it into the Add Product Entry modal, select LLM-Refined Definition, and let the agent populate the notes for you.

Main

To find the Settings navigate to JetBrains -> Settings -> Tools -> Cyclops.

Beads Settings

The application is powered by beads. This page has settings related to beads and how Issues are worked.

AI Providers & Models

You can assign models for each stage of the workflow.

Agents & Skills

You can set the authoritative locations for Global and Project Agents and Skills.

Automations

These toggles control how much of the workflow the agents carry out automatically.