Night Watch CLI

Overnight PRD execution for AI-native devs and small teams

Night Watch is an async execution layer for well-scoped engineering work. It takes PRDs or queued board items, runs Claude CLI or Codex in isolated git worktrees, and opens pull requests while you're offline.

Think of it as a repo night shift: you define the work during the day, Night Watch executes the queue overnight, and you wake up to PRs, review fixes, QA output, and audit results.

Night Watch is built for AI-native solo developers, maintainers, and small teams that already work from specs. It is not trying to replace every engineering workflow or turn software delivery into a hands-off black box.

Table of Contents

• Quick Start
• 5-Minute Walkthrough
• Who It's For
• Supported Providers
• Using GLM-5 or Custom Endpoints
• Installation
• Documentation
• License

Quick Start

# 1. Install globally
npm install -g @jonit-dev/night-watch-cli

# 2. Initialize in your project
cd your-project
night-watch init

# 3. Check provider detection
night-watch run --dry-run

# 4. Add a well-scoped ticket (board mode) or PRD (file mode)
night-watch board create-prd "Implement feature X" --priority P1
# OR: echo "# My First PRD\n\nImplement feature X..." > docs/prds/my-feature.md

# 5. Run or install cron
night-watch run           # Run once
night-watch install       # Setup automated cron

5-Minute Walkthrough

New to Night Watch? Follow our 5-Minute Walkthrough to go from zero to your first AI-generated PR.

Board View

Queue work as GitHub issues and track them through Draft → Ready → In Progress → Review → Done.

Execution Timeline

See all scheduled agent runs across your projects at a glance.

# Quick start
npm install -g @jonit-dev/night-watch-cli
cd your-project
night-watch init
night-watch doctor
echo "# My First PRD\n\n## Problem\n..." > docs/prds/01-my-feature.md
night-watch run

Agent / Machine-Readable CLI

External agents and automation should use the JSON-first manageability commands instead of scraping human output:

night-watch agent status --json
night-watch health --json
night-watch config list --json
night-watch config get reviewerEnabled --json
night-watch config set reviewerEnabled false --json
night-watch job pause reviewer --json
night-watch job resume reviewer --json

JSON modes write one JSON document to stdout on success and reserve stderr for errors. night-watch status --json keeps its legacy shape for backward compatibility; night-watch agent status --json adds a stable wrapper with schemaVersion, status, paused, queue, board, health, and lastRuns.

Paused jobs are stored in night-watch.config.json under pausedJobs. Cron scripts and queue claim/dispatch paths read this state before starting work, so night-watch job pause <job> --json prevents new cron/queue-dispatched runs for that job until resumed.

Who It's For

Night Watch is strongest when:

• You already use structured specs, PRDs, or queued board items
• You want async execution, not another pair-programming UI
• Your work can be broken into small, reviewable pull requests
• You care about overnight throughput on bounded tasks like maintenance, review fixes, QA, and backlog chores

Night Watch is a weaker fit when:

• Work starts vague and gets clarified only during implementation
• Your team is not comfortable reviewing AI-generated pull requests
• You want a general-purpose AI coding assistant rather than a queue-based execution system

Supported Providers

• Default provider is claude
• Change with --provider codex flag or "provider": "codex" in config

Using GLM-5 or Custom Endpoints

Night Watch supports passing custom environment variables to the provider CLI via the providerEnv config field. This lets you point the Claude CLI at any Anthropic-compatible endpoint — including GLM-5.

Add providerEnv to your night-watch.config.json:

{
  "provider": "claude",
  "providerEnv": {
    "ANTHROPIC_API_KEY": "your-glm5-api-key",
    "ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL": "https://your-glm5-endpoint.example.com"
  }
}

These variables are:

• Injected into the provider CLI process at runtime (night-watch run, night-watch review)
• Exported in cron entries when you run night-watch install, so automated runs also pick them up
• Visible in --dry-run output for easy debugging

Common Use Cases

See Configuration > Provider Environment for full details.

Installation

npm (Recommended)

npm install -g @jonit-dev/night-watch-cli

npx (No install)

npx @jonit-dev/night-watch-cli init

From Source

git clone https://github.com/jonit-dev/night-watch-cli.git
cd night-watch-cli
yarn install && yarn build && npm link

Documentation

Full documentation is available at nightwatchcli.com.

Getting Started

How-To Guides

Architecture & Deep Dives

Developer Guides

Telemetry

Night Watch collects anonymous product telemetry by default to understand usage and improve the CLI. Disable it anytime with night-watch telemetry disable, NW_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1, or DO_NOT_TRACK=1. See Privacy for the exact collected and never-collected lists.

Analysis

Inspiration

• Night Shift by Jamon Holmgren — An agentic day/night workflow with persona-based review loops, documentation-as-routing, and structured 16-step agent execution. Many ideas here influenced Night Watch's design.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.