page:docs-user-guide-features-adapters
Adapters: Run Babysitter on Any Harness reference
Docs(../index.md) › Features(./index.md) › Adapters
Adapters: Run Babysitter on Any Harness
**Version:** 6.0.0 (v6) · **Last Updated:** 2026-06-22 · **Category:** Feature Guide
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In Plain English
**Adapters let your Babysitter processes run on any supported AI coding harness - not just Claude Code.**
Before v6, Babysitter orchestration was wired specifically to Claude Code's session and hook model. With **Adapters**, the orchestration runtime is harness-agnostic: the same process, the same journal, the same quality gates and breakpoints run on Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, GitHub Copilot, and a growing list of others. You pick the harness; Babysitter adapts to it.
There are two ways you will touch Adapters:
- **The Adapters runtime** - the harness-agnostic core that every Babysitter run now sits on. You don't install this separately; it ships with the SDK.
- **The Adapters CLI** (
adapters) - a host-side binary that lets you run and manage harnesses directly from your shell.
**Headline change for v6:** Babysitter is no longer "an orchestration framework for Claude Code." It is an orchestration framework for *any supported harness*, and Adapters is the subsystem that makes that true.
**Adapters is a FAMILY, not one thing.** What this page calls "Adapters" is really 20 distinct package types under
packages/adapters/— triggers (CI), extensions (plugin compile), hooks (mandatory-stop lifecycle), proxy (140+ providers), tasks (durable breakpoints), codecs (per-harness drivers), and more. When you hear "adapters," ask *which* adapter. The full enumeration is in the Adapter Types reference.
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On this page
- Why Adapters Exist
- The Adapters Runtime (Technical Depth)
- How Adapters Replace the Legacy Model
- Getting Started with Adapters
- Related Documentation
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Why Adapters Exist
The original Babysitter design assumed one harness (Claude Code) and one continuation mechanism (Claude's Stop hook). Every new harness meant hand-rolling the orchestration loop against that harness's specific lifecycle - bespoke code, duplicated logic, and drift between integrations.
Adapters invert that. A harness is integrated by describing it - its capabilities, its hook model, its command surface - as data in a catalog, and the runtime adapts. Adding or updating a harness becomes an **adapter/data change**, not a fork of the orchestration engine.
This is the core v6 story: **harness-agnosticism through adapters**.
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The Adapters Runtime (Technical Depth)
The Adapters runtime is composed of several cooperating packages under packages/adapters/*:
| Subsystem | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| **Core** | The harness-agnostic run/session/options model that every adapter implements against |
| **SDK** | The programmatic surface processes use to run agents through adapters |
| **Gateway** | The browser/mobile gateway service (adapters gateway serve) for remote control of runs |
| **Observability** | Session, cost, and trace capture across harnesses |
| **Codecs** | Encoding/decoding of harness-specific message and tool formats into the common model |
| **Transport** | Provider transports (Anthropic, OpenAI chat/responses, Google) and the proxy used by adapters launch |
| **Harness mock** | A mock harness (--use-mock-harness) for testing processes without spending tokens |
How Adapters Relate to the Rest of v6
Adapters is the runtime layer the other v6 subsystems plug into:
- **Hooks Adapter** - a canonical session store plus a merge engine that normalizes each harness's distinct hook/continuation model (Claude
Stop, Gemini/antigravityAfterAgent, openclaw daemonagent_end, opencodesession.idle, Hermes ACP, and the thin/skill:*alias harnesses) into one consistent contract. Adapters do not generalize the ClaudeStop-hook model onto harnesses that don't have it. - **Breakpoints Adapter** - serverless-durable human-in-the-loop approval with pluggable backends (GitHub Issues, server) and "proven" cryptographic signing. See Breakpoints.
- **Transport Adapter and Triggers** - normalize provider transports and inbound webhooks (GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket) so a run can be launched from CI. See GitHub Actions Setup.
- **Atlas** - the catalog that the runtime reads to discover harness capabilities and adapters.
v6 Architecture
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How Adapters Replace the Legacy Model
| Prod (pre-v6) mental model | v6 reality with Adapters |
|---|---|
| "Orchestration framework for Claude Code" | Orchestration framework for any supported harness |
Loop driven by Claude's Stop hook | Per-harness continuation models normalized by the Hooks Adapter |
| New harness = bespoke SDK integration code | New harness = an adapter/data entry in Atlas |
Agent-Mux packages (-mux) | Renamed to **Adapters** (-adapter) |
If you are reading older docs that describe hand-rolling the SDK loop into a harness, treat that as a contributor-level integration note - the user-facing path is now the Adapters runtime plus the per-harness pages.
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Getting Started with Adapters
Install the host-side CLI and run a harness immediately:
npm install -g @a5c-ai/adapters-cli
adapters doctor
adapters run claude "explain this codebase"To use Adapters from inside a harness as a Babysitter orchestration run, install that harness's plugin (see the per-harness pages) and use its command surface.
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Related Documentation
- Adapter Types reference - All 20 adapter package types enumerated (Adapters is a family)
- Adapters (ecosystem overview) - Introductory tour of the adapters family
- Adapters CLI Reference - Every
adapterscommand and flag - Architecture & How It Fits Together - Where Adapters sits in the whole ecosystem
- Architecture Overview - Where Adapters sits in the v6 architecture
- Hooks - The Hooks Adapter and per-harness continuation models
- Harnesses: Install Matrix - All supported harnesses
- Claude Code · Codex - Fully-worked harness pages
- Glossary - Adapter, Harness, Atlas, and related terms
Next steps
- **Next:** Adapter Types reference — all 20 types
- **Related:** Adapters CLI Reference, Install Matrix, Hooks, Architecture & How It Fits Together