page:docs-user-guide-ecosystem-adapters
adapters — a family, not one thing reference
Docs(../index.md) › Ecosystem(./overview.md) › adapters
adapters — a family, not one thing
**Umbrella package:** @a5c-ai/adapters · **Source:** packages/adapters/* (20 package directories) · **Version:** 6.0.0 · **Maturity:** GA
**The single most important point on this page:** "Adapters" is a **family of packages**, not one package. There are 20 adapter package directories under
packages/adapters/, each with a distinct job. When someone says "adapters," ask *which* adapter.
**The adapters family is the multiplexer for *all* agents. It is what turns "Babysitter runs on Claude Code" into "Babysitter runs on any supported harness, in CI, with any of 140+ model providers, with durable human approvals" — by defining each integration surface once and multiplexing it to many targets.**
The family keeps its name precisely because it is **not** genty-specific — it multiplexes for every agent.
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On this page
- Why it is a family
- The umbrella package
- The big six you will actually touch
- The full taxonomy
- Provenance
- Next steps
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Why it is a family
A harness is integrated by *describing* it — its capabilities, hook model, and command surface — as data in the Atlas catalog, and the runtime adapts. Adding or updating a harness becomes an adapter/data change, not a fork of the orchestration engine. Different concerns (spawning a session, normalizing hooks, bridging providers, parking a breakpoint, compiling a plugin) live in different packages so each can evolve independently.
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The umbrella package
@a5c-ai/adapters (the sdk/ directory) is the convenient one-install entry for the family. It re-exports:
comm-adapter(the public Node core runtime), andadapters-codecs(the per-harness codecs), andadapters-cli(theadapterscommand).
npm install -g @a5c-ai/adapters-cli # the host-side `adapters` CLI
adapters doctor
adapters run claude "explain this codebase"See the Adapters feature guide for the runtime story and the Adapters CLI reference for the command surface.
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The big six you will actually touch
| Adapter | Package | Why you care |
|---|---|---|
| **triggers** | @a5c-ai/triggers-adapter | The CI / GitHub Action entrypoint — normalizes Git-forge events into one shape and launches a run non-interactively. |
| **extensions** | @a5c-ai/extensions-adapter | Compiles a single plugin.json manifest into **9** AI-coding-agent plugin formats. |
| **hooks** | @a5c-ai/hooks-adapter-cli + @a5c-ai/hooks-adapter-core | The cross-harness **mandatory-stop** lifecycle layer — this is what makes obedience work on every harness. |
| **proxy** | adapters-proxy (Python) | A LiteLLM bridge to **140+ providers** — frees vendor-locked harnesses from a single backend. |
| **tasks** | @a5c-ai/tasks-adapter | The **Breakpoints Adapter** — durable, serverless-ready human-approval breakpoints (e.g. GitHub Issues). |
| **codecs** | @a5c-ai/adapters-codecs | The concrete per-harness drivers (claude, codex, gemini, copilot, cursor, opencode, pi, …). |
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The full taxonomy
All 20 adapter types — what each is and where each is used — are enumerated in the dedicated reference:
➡️ **Adapter Types reference** — the authoritative list of all 20.
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Provenance
Several packages (core/, cli/, sdk/, proxy/, tasks/, harness-mock/) were consolidated into this monorepo from a **formerly standalone adapters repository** (the v6 announcement notes "1,363 files, 205K lines"). All adapter-family READMEs point to the canonical docs home docs/package-and-plugin-map.md (Package & Plugin Map).
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Next steps
- **The full list:** Adapter Types reference — all 20 types
- **The runtime story:** Adapters feature guide
- **The command surface:** Adapters CLI reference
- **See where it sits:** Architecture & How It Fits Together