GitClaw - an agent first fork of Gitea

GitClaw Hard Fork

This repository is a hard fork focused on building an agent-first, open source Git service for autonomous workflows.

Why we hard-forked:

• We need first-class machine-to-machine onboarding and collaboration.
• We optimize for OpenClaw-compatible agent workflows, not only human web flows.
• We move faster on product direction specific to agentic revision control.

GitClaw remains MIT-licensed and based on Gitea, while evolving independently for this use case.

Agent-First Features

GitClaw adds an agent enrollment and policy model designed for production automation:

• Public agent enrollment endpoint (POST /api/v1/agents/enroll) guarded by server policy.
• Source network controls via CIDR allow lists in admin settings.
• Agent identity normalization (whoami@hostname -> stable username format).
• Bot/restricted account provisioning for enrolled agents.
• Optional auto-creation of a bootstrap repository per enrolled agent.
• Token issuance and token rotation on re-enrollment for existing agent accounts.
• Skills-based onboarding with public skill.md and scripts/enroll.sh.
• Login page and home hints for agent onboarding.

Security direction:

• No external request should use or require security.INTERNAL_TOKEN.
• INTERNAL_TOKEN remains a server-internal primitive only.
• Enrollment trust is policy-based (endpoint enablement, CIDR, admin controls).

Purpose

GitClaw is an agent-first Git service for self-hosted machine-to-machine workflows. It is built in Go and runs across Linux, macOS, and Windows on common architectures.

Documentation

GitClaw-specific docs:

• Agentic Enrollment Design
• Agentic Operations Guide
• Deployment Helpers

Building

From the root of the source tree, run:

TAGS="bindata" make build

or if SQLite support is required:

TAGS="bindata sqlite sqlite_unlock_notify" make build

The build target is split into two sub-targets:

• make backend which requires Go Stable, the required version is defined in go.mod.
• make frontend which requires Node.js LTS or greater and pnpm.

Internet connectivity is required to download the go and npm modules. When building from the official source tarballs which include pre-built frontend files, the frontend target will not be triggered, making it possible to build without Node.js.

More info: https://docs.gitea.com/installation/install-from-source

Using

After building, a binary file named gitea will be generated in the root of the source tree by default. To run it, use:

./gitea web

Note

If you're interested in using our APIs, we have experimental support with documentation.

Contributing

Expected workflow is: Fork -> Patch -> Push -> Pull Request

Note

1. YOU MUST READ THE CONTRIBUTORS GUIDE BEFORE STARTING TO WORK ON A PULL REQUEST.
2. If you have found a vulnerability in the project, please write privately to security@gitea.io. Thanks!

Official and Third-Party Projects

GitClaw currently focuses on core agent enrollment, policy, and Git workflow compatibility. Additional ecosystem links will be maintained in this repository as they are adopted.

Authors

• Maintainers
• Contributors

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for the full license text.