saga-mcp

Your coding agent loses the plan between sessions. You come back tomorrow and it has no idea which of the five things you agreed on are done, which one is blocked on which, or why you rejected the second approach — because the plan lived in the context window, or in a TODO.md nobody updates.

saga-mcp gives the agent a real tracker instead: a SQLite file in your project holding projects, epics, tasks, subtasks, dependencies, comments, notes and decisions, exposed as 41 MCP tools. The agent writes to it as it works and reads it back when it returns. No accounts, no external service, no network calls — the database is a file you own.

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Install

Add saga-mcp to your MCP client. The same block works for Claude Code (.mcp.json in your project), Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json), and any other MCP client:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "saga": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "saga-mcp"],
      "env": { "DB_PATH": "/absolute/path/to/your/project/.tracker.db" }
    }
  }
}

Restart the client. DB_PATH is the only required setting; the file and its schema are created on first use. Prefer a global install? npm install -g saga-mcp, then use saga-mcp as the command instead of npx.

Tested on Node 20, 22 and 24, on Linux, macOS and Windows.

Settings

Variable	Required	Description
DB_PATH	Yes	Path to the .tracker.db SQLite file. Created on first use.
SAGA_PROJECT	No	Scope every tool to one project, by id or name. Set this per repo when several repos share one database.
SAGA_TOOLS	No	full (default) lists all 41 tools. core lists only the 13 an ordinary tracking session needs, saving ~4,300 tokens per session. See token cost.

No API keys, no accounts, no external services.

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Your first session

You: "Set up tracking for the e-commerce API and plan out auth."

tracker_init({ project_name: "E-Commerce API" })
epic_create({ project_id: 1, name: "Authentication", priority: "high" })
task_create({ epic_id: 1, title: "Design auth schema", priority: "critical" })
task_create({ epic_id: 1, title: "Implement JWT auth", depends_on: [1] })
task_create({ epic_id: 1, title: "Add OAuth2 Google login", depends_on: [2] })

Tasks 2 and 3 come back blocked — their dependencies aren't done. Finish task 1 and task 2 unblocks itself.

Next session, you: "Where were we?"

tracker_next({})
  -> Work on #1 'Design auth schema' — critical priority, in the active epic
     'Authentication'. 2 other task(s) are blocked.

One recommendation with the reason. For the whole picture instead, tracker_dashboard({}) returns stats, epics, blocked and overdue tasks, recent activity and notes, with a summary on top.

And when you would rather look than ask, saga-web puts the same database in a browser:

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What you get

• The next thing to do — one recommendation with its reason, at a third the cost of the dashboard
• Real sequencing — dependencies that auto-block and auto-unblock, a manual order the tools respect, and cycles refused rather than deadlocked
• Guards against agent drift — a lockable description, and prerequisites enforced on write rather than merely reported
• A web UI — saga-web serves the same database in a browser, read and write
• Templates — reusable task sets with {variable} substitution, editable in place
• Archiving and soft delete — get finished work out of the context you pay for, reversibly
• Forgiving input — a smaller model sending an array as a JSON string doesn't silently collapse your batch into one record
• One file, many projects — per-repo databases or one shared file
• A full audit trail — every mutation logged with old and new values, and nothing an agent removes is unrecoverable
• 41 tools with MCP safety annotations on every one, and a tiered surface when you want a smaller context bill

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Asking what to do next

tracker_dashboard hands an agent everything and leaves it to reason. tracker_next answers the question:

tracker_next()
  -> Work on #12 'Write the adapter' — already in progress, high priority, in the
     active epic 'Provider swap'. Next step: implement. Also overdue: #18 'Renew cert'.
     3 other task(s) are blocked.

One recommendation with the reason, the next unfinished subtask inside it, a couple of alternatives, and anything overdue or blocked. About a third the size of the dashboard.

The ordering rule worth knowing: continuing beats starting. A task already in progress outranks an untouched one that is overdue or higher priority, because abandoning work in flight just leaves two things unfinished — the overdue work is named in the summary instead. Blocked tasks are never recommended, archived epics and removed tasks are skipped, and subtask dependencies decide which step comes next inside the chosen task.

When nothing is actionable it says what to unblock rather than returning an empty answer:

Nothing is actionable: all 4 remaining task(s) are blocked.
Unblocking #7 'the keystone' would release 3 of them.

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Ordering and dependencies

A deliberate order wins over a guess. task_list sorts by priority until someone arranges an epic, and from then on it follows the arrangement:

task_reorder({ epic_id: 2, ordered_ids: [8, 5, 6] })
task_list({ epic_id: 2 })                        // 8, 5, 6 — the plan, in order
task_list({ epic_id: 2, sort_by: "priority" })   // priority, if that is what you want

Priority is a reasonable guess about what matters; a sequence someone wrote down is not a guess. An agent handed a plan should start at the beginning of it, not at whichever step happens to be marked critical.

Nothing changes for epics nobody has arranged — those sort by priority exactly as before, and an explicit sort_by is always obeyed literally.

Anything omitted from ordered_ids keeps its relative position at the end. sort_order runs ascending — lower sorts first — and a task created after an arrangement has no place in it, so it lands at the end rather than the front. In the web UI you can drag tasks into place inside an epic.

Task dependencies auto-block and auto-unblock:

task_update({ id: 9, depends_on: [8] })   // 9 becomes blocked while 8 is open

Re-evaluation runs whenever a blocker's doneness changes in either direction, so reopening a finished blocker blocks its dependents again, and clearing the last dependency releases them. Circular dependencies are refused with the loop named, for tasks and subtasks alike — anything in a cycle would be blocked forever. The web UI shows a banner at the top of a blocked task naming what it waits on, with a picker to add or remove dependencies.

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Keeping agents on the rails

Two guards for the ways an agent goes wrong on a long task.

A locked description. Agents sometimes rewrite a task's description to record progress, when they meant to add a comment — and the spec you agreed on is gone. Lock it and task_update refuses:

task_lock_description({ id: 12 })
task_update({ id: 12, description: "..." })
  -> Task 12's description is locked and was not changed. Record progress with
     comment_add instead, or unlock it in the web UI if the description is genuinely wrong.

Everything else about the task stays editable — the point is to protect the spec, not freeze the task. The lock cannot be cleared as a side effect of an ordinary task_update; it takes a deliberate task_lock_description call or the lock toggle in the web UI, and both are logged.

This is a guard against confusion, not an adversarial control: an agent that is told to unlock still can. It turns a silent overwrite into a visible, reversible decision.

Subtask order and dependencies. New subtasks are appended in order rather than all landing at position 0, subtask_reorder sets the order in one call (or drag them in the UI), and a subtask can wait on its siblings:

subtask_update({ id: 8, depends_on: [5, 6] })    // 8 waits for 5 and 6
subtask_update({ id: 4, blocks: [5, 6, 7, 8] })  // a bug that holds up the rest

Reads carry depends_on and blocked, and the block is enforced on write: starting or finishing a subtask whose prerequisites are unmet is refused, and so is completing a task whose checklist is still open.

subtask_update({ id: 8, status: "in_progress" })
  -> Subtask 8 cannot be started — it waits on #5 'write the parser' (todo).
     Finish those first, or pass force: true to override deliberately (the override is logged).

force: true is the way past, for when a person has decided the blocker no longer applies. It works on subtask_update, task_update and task_batch_update, and every override is written to the activity log naming what was skipped. The web UI asks for confirmation and then sends it.

The distinction that matters is between an agent quietly ignoring a blocker and someone choosing to override one. Dependencies stay within one task — a checklist item waiting on something under a different task is a task-level dependency, and task_update depends_on already models that.

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Comments as a decision trail

comment_add({ task_id: 5, content: "Investigated root cause: CORS headers missing on preflight" })
comment_add({ task_id: 5, content: "Fixed by adding OPTIONS handler. Tested with curl." })
task_update({ id: 5, status: "done" })

Comments persist across sessions — next time an agent calls task_get(5), it sees the full thread.

If a comment turns out to be wrong, retract it without losing the trail:

comment_delete({ id: 12, reason: "Root cause was wrong — it was a proxy timeout", deleted_by: "pranab" })

The row stays in the database and in the activity log. comment_list and task_get skip it, comment_list({ task_id: 5, include_deleted: true }) shows it with its reason, and comment_restore({ id: 12 }) brings it back. Nothing an agent removes is unrecoverable.

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Templates

A reusable set of tasks with {variable} placeholders, filled in when applied:

template_create({
  name: "feature_workflow",
  tasks: [
    { title: "Design {feature} API",       priority: "critical", estimated_hours: 2 },
    { title: "Implement {feature}",        priority: "high",     estimated_hours: 8 },
    { title: "Write tests for {feature}",  priority: "high",     estimated_hours: 4 }
  ]
})

template_apply({ template_id: 1, epic_id: 2, variables: { feature: "user auth" } })
// -> "Design user auth API", "Implement user auth", "Write tests for user auth"

Templates are editable in place, which matters because the id is what template_apply refers to — recreating one breaks anything holding it:

template_update({ id: 1, name: "Feature rollout" })                  // tasks untouched
template_update({ id: 1, tasks: [{ title: "Design {feature}" }] })   // name untouched
template_list({ include_tasks: true })                               // see what one creates

Task definitions are checked when written rather than when applied, so a bad priority or a missing title is refused up front instead of failing later against an epic you have already chosen. Templates live in the database as a whole, not inside one project.

The Templates tab shows what each one creates, and the {placeholders} it will ask for:

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Getting old work out of the way

An epic list that is mostly finished work, and tasks an agent created that should have been subtasks, are context you pay for on every call.

epic_archive({ id: 4 })            // the epic and its tasks drop out of listings
task_delete({ id: 12, reason: "should have been a subtask" })

Archiving is deliberately not the cancelled status: cancelled means "we decided not to do this", while most of what you want to archive is completed. Archived epics and their tasks disappear from epic_list, tracker_dashboard, task_list and tracker_search — including the statistics, not just the lists — and come back with include_archived.

Nothing vanishes silently. The dashboard says what it left out:

Hidden: 2 archived epic(s) and 1 removed task(s) — pass include_archived to include them.

task_delete is the same soft delete comments have, restricted to tasks still in todo: anything further along has comments, time tracking and an activity log that removing it would strand, and a task other tasks depend on is refused outright so nothing is left blocked forever. The row is kept, task_restore brings it back, and tracker_export includes archived and removed rows because a backup that omits things is not a backup.

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Forgiving input

Smaller models routinely send an array parameter as a string containing JSON. Every array-taking tool accepts that, so a batch does not silently collapse into one record:

subtask_create({ task_id: 3, titles: '["Write it","Test it"]' })   // 2 subtasks
subtask_create({ task_id: 3, titles: "- Write it\n- Test it" })    // 2 subtasks
task_batch_update({ ids: "[4,5]", status: "done" })                // both tasks
task_create({ epic_id: 1, title: "x", tags: "billing, urgent" })   // 2 tags

Coercion stops where intent becomes ambiguous. A comma inside a title is left alone — "Design the API, then implement it" is one subtask, not two — while a comma in a tag or an id list is a separator, because neither can contain one. Anything genuinely unusable is refused with a message naming what arrived and what was wanted, rather than a leaked ids.map is not a function.

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One database, many projects

saga-mcp works either way: a .tracker.db per repo (portable, keeps unrelated work apart), or one shared database that every repo points at.

The shared setup needs one extra thing. projects is the top-level table, so a shared file holds several projects — but task_list, note_list, activity_log and tracker_search read across the whole file unless told otherwise. An agent in repo B would see repo A's tasks. Set SAGA_PROJECT per repo and each agent sees only its own:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "saga": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "saga-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "DB_PATH": "/Users/you/saga/central.tracker.db",
        "SAGA_PROJECT": "Payments platform"
      }
    }
  }
}

SAGA_PROJECT takes a project id or a project name (case-insensitive), and fails on startup with the list of real projects if it matches neither. Every scoped tool also accepts an explicit project_id argument, which wins over the environment variable.

Setup	What to set	Result
One database per repo	DB_PATH	Nothing to scope — one project per file
Shared database, per-repo agents	DB_PATH + SAGA_PROJECT	Each agent sees only its project
Shared database, one agent over everything	DB_PATH	Tools read across all projects

With neither SAGA_PROJECT nor a project_id, tracker_dashboard falls back to the first project in the file and says so — the response carries other_projects and the summary explains that the project was a guess, rather than silently reporting on the wrong repo.

The web UI is unaffected either way: its project switcher lists every project in the database, and each tab is scoped to the selected one.

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Web UI

Everything above is agent-facing. saga-web puts the same database in a browser — for the times when reviewing a spec an agent just wrote, or fixing one field by hand, is faster than another prompt.

npx -p saga-mcp saga-web ./.tracker.db --open

Or against a database you already point your MCP server at:

saga-web --db ~/saga/central.tracker.db --port 8080

Option	Default	Description
--db <path>	$DB_PATH	Database to open. A positional path works too.
--port <n>	first free from 4319	Omit it and saga-web takes the first free port, so one instance per project just works. --port N binds exactly N and fails if taken; --port 0 lets the OS choose. Also SAGA_WEB_PORT.
--host <addr>	127.0.0.1	Bind address. Local-only by default.
--read-only	off	Serve the UI with every editing control removed.
--open	off	Open the UI in your default browser.

Six tabs:

• Overview — stats, per-epic progress, blocked and overdue tasks
• Board — kanban across the five task statuses; drag a card to change its status

• Epics — the full Epic → Task → Subtask tree, which is the fastest way to review a spec an agent just wrote. Blocked tasks carry a ⛔ naming what they wait on, finished ones are struck through, and tasks drag into order

• Notes — decisions, context and blockers
• Templates — every template with the tasks it creates and the {placeholders} it uses; edit the details, edit the task list, apply it to an epic, or delete it
• Activity — the complete change history

And throughout:

• Task drawer — edit any field, comment, remove or restore a comment, lock the description, drag subtasks into order, and set which subtasks wait on which. Each subtask has one control carrying its whole state (todo / in progress / done, or blocked), and the drawer resizes by dragging its edge

• Markdown — descriptions, comments and notes render headings, tables, lists, code and links. Agent-written content is escaped before any markdown rule runs, so raw HTML can never reach the page, and only http/https/mailto links are followed
• Project switcher — every project in the database, so one central .tracker.db covers all your repos; every tab, including Activity, is scoped to the selected project
• Shareable, refreshable URLs — the open project, tab and task live in the address bar, so a browser refresh puts you back where you were and back/forward move between tasks. A ⟳ button in the task drawer re-reads that task without a page reload, for picking up what an agent just wrote

Writes from the UI call the same handlers the MCP tools do, so edits you make by hand are validated identically and land in the same activity log as the agent's — an agent calling tracker_dashboard after you fix something sees the fix and how it happened.

A few deliberate limits: it binds to 127.0.0.1 unless you ask otherwise, it has no authentication (don't put it on a shared network), and it will not create a database — point it at one your MCP server already uses. Separate .tracker.db files are not yet aggregated into one view; a single database with multiple projects is.

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Token cost

The tool list is context every session pays before any work happens, and list responses are context it pays again on every call. Both are kept deliberately small:

• Responses are compact JSON — no pretty-print indentation, which measured 20-27% of every response
• task_list rows omit nulls and metadata, and truncate descriptions to 120 characters (call task_get for a task's full text) — 19-39% smaller depending on how long your descriptions run
• activity_log omits null columns and the row id (no tool takes one) — about 27% smaller
• tracker_search returns previews rather than whole records — about 47% smaller; follow up with task_get or note_list for the full text
• SAGA_TOOLS=core drops the listed surface from ~7,200 tokens to ~2,900

note_list deliberately keeps full note content — it is the retrieval tool, not a preview.

Set SAGA_TOOLS=core when an agent only tracks work; leave it unset when you want templates, import/export, session diffs and the rest discoverable. Tools left off the list still work when called by name — core shrinks what is advertised, not what exists.

The core thirteen: tracker_init, tracker_next, tracker_dashboard, project_list, epic_create, epic_list, task_create, task_list, task_get, task_update, subtask_create, note_save, comment_add.

Every tool description is held to a byte budget in the test suite, so the surface cannot grow by accretion: adding a tool means trimming prose elsewhere or justifying the increase.

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Tool reference

Getting started

Tool	Description	Annotations
tracker_init	Initialize tracker and create first project	readOnly: false, idempotent: true
tracker_next	What to work on next, with the reason and what is blocked	readOnly: true
tracker_dashboard	Full project overview with natural language summary	readOnly: true

Projects

Tool	Description	Annotations
project_create	Create a new project	readOnly: false
project_list	List projects with completion stats	readOnly: true
project_update	Update project (archive to soft-delete)	readOnly: false, idempotent: true

Epics

Tool	Description	Annotations
epic_create	Create an epic within a project	readOnly: false
epic_list	List epics with task counts	readOnly: true
epic_update	Update an epic	readOnly: false, idempotent: true
epic_archive	Archive/unarchive an epic, hiding it and its tasks from listings	readOnly: false, idempotent: true

Tasks