Okto Nexus is a local-first multi-agent coordination harness and orchestrator developed by OktoLabs. It acts as an execution bus designed to coordinate specialized AI coding agents—such as OpenAI Codex, Anthropic Claude, Antigravity, and custom agent harnesses—into structured, collaborative development workflows. In day-to-day use, Nexus runs as a local daemon backed by a SQLite WAL state store, exposing 46 Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools alongside REST and SSE endpoints. Agents connect to the local bus using per-agent keys, exchanging durable messages, claiming task ownership via single-winner handoffs, and conforming to operator-configured communication profiles. Operators monitor live presence, claim latencies, message distribution, and active handoffs through a loopback web dashboard. Unlike standalone CLI coding agents or uncoordinated agent loops, Nexus emphasizes multi-agent governance and deterministic handoffs to eliminate manual context copying and duplicate execution. It provides human-in-the-loop approval queues for sensitive operations, operator-defined capability registries, and content guardrails that log scrubbed security signals prior to tool execution. Okto Nexus is free to run locally without cloud accounts or external telemetry dependencies. It integrates alongside Okto Pulse to connect specifications, task criteria, agent implementation, and human review in a self-hosted environment.
Single-Winner Task Handoffs — Prevents duplicate work across agent teams by enforcing atomic, verifiable ownership claims on delegated tasks. - Local Coordination Bus — Persists messages, handoffs, approvals, sessions, and agent memories in a local SQLite WAL database. - Human-in-the-Loop Approval Queues — Pauses sensitive agent actions and holds executable operations until an operator approves or rejects them with recorded justification. - MCP Tool Integration — Exposes 46 Model Context Protocol tools, REST endpoints, and Server-Sent Events (SSE) for agent participation and background monitoring. - Operator Observability Dashboard — Displays a real-time graph of agent presence, active handoffs, claim latencies, message flow, and workspace health metrics. - Guardrails and Governance Policies — Enforces token limits, byte quotas, audience restrictions, and content inspection across global or group-scoped agent boundaries. - Communication Profiles and Tag Registry — Standardizes agent output formatting (tone, verbosity, structure) and routes work using an operator-managed capability vocabulary.
Use cases
Use Case: Specification Validation and Development Handoff A developer drafts an API specification with a planning agent, which automatically opens a validation handoff to a secondary review agent via Nexus. Once the review model verifies the specification against project requirements, Nexus holds the implementation task until the developer explicitly reviews and approves the handoff to a coding agent.
Use Case: Gated Execution on Sensitive Operations A developer connects multiple terminal agents to shared MCP tooling and configures approval policies for file modifications and external deployment commands. Nexus intercepts and pauses destructive operations, queuing the exact actions in the operator dashboard for manual verification before execution.
Use Case: Multi-Agent Collaboration Without Context Drift An engineering team delegates tasks across specialized agents using an operator-defined capability registry, routing architectural reviews to high-reasoning models and boilerplate generation to faster coding harnesses. Nexus preserves shared context, artifacts, and durable message history across all sessions to prevent manual copy-pasting.
Who it is for
Okto Nexus is designed for software engineers, system architects, and technical teams orchestrating multi-agent CLI workflows that require task governance, deterministic handoffs, and human-in-the-loop control. It is not intended for developers seeking a single, self-contained interactive terminal chatbot that operates without local service dependencies or multi-agent routing.
Install guide
Installation Install Okto Nexus using pip with the serve extra: bash pip install "okto-nexus[serve]"
First Run Start the local coordination hub against your project repository: bash okto-nexus serve --project-root . Open the operator observatory dashboard in your browser: bash open http://127.0.0.1:8202 The dashboard and REST interfaces operate unauthenticated on loopback (127.0.0.1), while connecting MCP agent clients require per-agent keys generated through the interface or CLI.
Example Session Configure your MCP-compatible coding agent (such as Claude Code or a custom harness) to connect to the local Nexus endpoint: bash claude mcp add okto-nexus http://127.0.0.1:8202/mcp --key <AGENT_KEY> Prompt your agent to create and delegate a governed task through the coordination bus: text Create a task handoff for the OAuth2 login feature, submit it for validation by Claude, and hold development for human approval.
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