use cases / UC-01 · agentic coding

A compiled coding specialist your agent calls over MCP.

Cursor, Claude Code, Cline, Aider, Continue all share one shape: high-frequency calls into your repo for conventions, types, error classes, and test scaffolds. kolm compiles those calls into a per-project signed artifact (a single .kolm file) that the agent calls over MCP. The artifact is a compiled binary, not a cache. Offline. K-score gated. Zero runtime egress. 100% deterministic.

01 · the gap

The gap is repo-awareness, not memory.

Coding agents are good at general code and bad at your code. Your conventions, your type aliases, your test fixtures, your build invariants: the agent re-derives all of it every turn. The model is fine. The harness has nothing to call. kolm compiles a file the harness can call.

Verifier quality gate
≥0.85pass rate

Compile only finalizes when the synthesized recipe’s quality score on positives is ≥0.85. Below the gate, no .kolm is written. The K-score composite is then computed over size, accuracy, and coverage and signed into the manifest.

Runtime egress
0bytes

The harness patches fetch, http, https, net, tls, dns before any recipe runs. Any attempted egress is recorded and counted against the artifact. Verified offline.

Receipt chain
5rings signed

Every recall is HMAC-chained to the prior call. One ring per: artifact hash, call binding, manifest, optional Sigstore Rekor anchor. Walks offline. Verifiable years later.

02 · the integration

One MCP server. One tool per artifact.

Every .kolm in ~/.kolm/artifacts registers as an MCP tool when you run kolm serve --mcp. The agent calls the tool over standard MCP tools/call; the artifact runs its embedded recipes against the input and returns a deterministic answer plus a signed receipt. Same input + same artifact = same output, every time.

DSC

Discover via tools/list.

The MCP server enumerates every artifact in your local registry. Each tool advertises its K-score, recipe count, signed/unsigned status, and a one-line task description. Agents pick the tool that matches their current step.

RUN

Run via tools/call.

The agent posts { name, arguments: { input } }. The server dispatches to the matching artifact, runs its recipes, returns the output as MCP text content plus an _kolm trailer with recipe_id, latency_us, k_score, receipt.

CHK

Trust the embedded gate.

Every artifact ships with the eval set it was gated on at compile time. If the artifact loaded, the signature verified and the K-score ≥ 0.85. The agent does not need to re-verify per call; the binary is the contract.

03 · install

Compile your repo. Point the agent at it.

No fork of the harness. No proxy. No prompt-engineering ritual. kolm compile reads your repo, builds the artifact, and exposes it over MCP. Your agent calls it like any other tool.

~/projects/myrepo
# 1. compile your task into a signed .kolm artifact
$ kolm compile --task "type-completion" --positives ./examples.json
 synthesized 12 recipes (verifier accepted, K-score 0.91)
 wrote ~/.kolm/artifacts/type-completion.kolm (3.2 KB, signed)

# 2. serve every artifact in your registry over MCP (stdio or HTTP)
$ kolm serve --mcp
 MCP server on stdin/stdout, protocol 2024-11-05
 1 tool registered: type-completion (signed, k=0.91)

# 3. add to Claude Code / Cursor MCP config and call from any turn.
$ cat ~/.config/claude/mcp.json
{ "mcpServers": { "kolm": { "command": "kolm", "args": ["serve", "--mcp"] } } }
  agent calls the artifact, not the cloud, for the operations
  it ran the gate against. re-compile when the inputs change.
04 · what a call looks like

One call. Sub-millisecond. Reproducible.

A single tools/call against a compiled .kolm dispatches a recipe and returns deterministic output plus a signed trailer. The reference fixture at test/fixtures/sample.kolm measures p50 = 274µs, p95 = 335µs, accuracy = 1.0, network egress = 0 over 400 invocations. Reproduce yourself in 30 seconds.

call timeline · reference run on test/fixtures/sample.kolm

The artifact is read-only at runtime.

No state accumulates. Same artifact + same input = same output, every run. To get newer answers, re-compile from newer repo state, like rebuilding a Docker image.

T+0µs

tools/call

Agent posts JSON-RPC { method: "tools/call", params: { name, arguments: { input } } } over stdio or HTTP.

T+274µs

p50 dispatch

Server loads recipes (cached after first call), runs the first matching recipe, captures wall-clock latency in microseconds. No network hop.

T+335µs

p95 reply

Server returns MCP text content plus _kolm trailer: recipe_id, latency_us, k_score, signed receipt. Receipt walks offline.

T+…

kolm compile

When your repo shape changes (PRs, refactors), re-run kolm compile. Produces a fresh signed .kolm; no migration.

05 · what we honestly do not claim

Where the artifact pays off, and where it does not.

kolm compiles a per-project signed artifact. It is not a memory layer; it is not a frontier-model replacement. It is a file. Below is what the file is good for and where it is the wrong shape.

+

Where the artifact helps.

Repo-aware operations the agent does dozens of times per session: convention lookup, type completion, fixture path resolution, error-class identification, test scaffold generation. Sub-10ms, deterministic, offline. The frontier model handles reasoning; the artifact handles repo facts.

~

Where it is neutral.

Greenfield code with no repo context, single-file puzzle solves, problems that fit entirely in the agent’s working set. The artifact has nothing repo-specific to contribute. The agent runs as if kolm were not installed.

!

Where it is the wrong shape.

Tasks that need creative reasoning across the whole repo (architectural redesign, cross-cutting refactors). The artifact is sealed at compile time; it cannot reason about its own contents. Use a frontier model for that, and call the artifact for the hundred lookups that follow.

Stop paying frontier prices for repo lookups.

The model is fine. The harness has nothing local to call. kolm compiles your repo into a signed file the agent can call: deterministic, offline, K-score gated.