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 38 MCP tools. The agent writes to it as it works and reads the dashboard when it comes back. No accounts, no external service, no network calls — the database is a file you own.

Install (60 seconds)

Claude Code — add to your project's .mcp.json:

{
  "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 setting; the file and schema are created on first use.

What it looks like

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_dashboard({})
→ "E-Commerce API: 5 tasks across 2 epics. 40% complete.
   Active: Authentication (2/3 done). Next up: Product Catalog (2 tasks).
   1 blocked task(s)."

Plus the structured data behind it: stats, epics, blocked and overdue tasks, recent activity, notes.

Features

• Full hierarchy: Projects > Epics > Tasks > Subtasks
• Task dependencies: Express sequencing with auto-block/unblock when deps are met
• Description lock: Stop agents rewriting a task's spec when they meant to leave a comment
• Subtask ordering & dependencies: Explicit order, and checklist items that wait on siblings
• Comments: Threaded discussions on tasks — leave breadcrumbs across sessions, with reversible soft-delete
• Web UI: saga-web serves a local dashboard for browsing and editing the same database
• Templates: Reusable task sets with {variable} substitution
• Dashboard: One tool call gives full overview with natural language summary
• SQLite: Self-contained .tracker.db file per project — zero setup, no external database
• Activity log: Every mutation is automatically tracked with old/new values
• Notes system: Decisions, context, meeting notes, blockers — all searchable
• Batch operations: Create multiple subtasks or update multiple tasks in one call
• 38 focused tools: With MCP safety annotations on every tool
• Import/export: Full project backup and migration as JSON (with dependencies and comments)
• Source references: Link tasks to specific code locations
• Auto time tracking: Hours computed automatically from activity log
• Cross-platform: Works on macOS, Windows, and Linux

Other clients

Claude Code

Add to your project's .mcp.json:

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

With Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop config (claude_desktop_config.json):

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

Manual install

npm install -g saga-mcp
DB_PATH=./my-project/.tracker.db saga-mcp

Configuration

saga-mcp requires a single environment variable:

No API keys, no accounts, no external services. Everything is stored locally in the SQLite file you specify.

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 tool surface from ~6,000 to ~2,700 tokens

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

Getting Started

Projects

Epics

Tasks

Subtasks

Comments

Templates

Notes

Intelligence

Import / Export

Usage Examples

Example 1: Starting a project with dependencies

User prompt: "Set up tracking for my new e-commerce API project"

Tool calls:

tracker_init({ project_name: "E-Commerce API", project_description: "REST API for online store" })
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", priority: "high", depends_on: [1] })
task_create({ epic_id: 1, title: "Add OAuth2 Google login", priority: "medium", depends_on: [2] })

Result: Task 2 and 3 are auto-blocked because their dependencies aren't done yet. When task 1 is marked done, task 2 auto-unblocks.

Example 2: Resuming work with dashboard summary

Tool calls:

tracker_dashboard({})

Response includes a natural language summary:

"E-Commerce API: 5 tasks across 2 epics. 40% complete. Active: Authentication (2/3 done). Next up: Product Catalog (2 tasks). 1 blocked task(s)."

Plus the full structured data (stats, epics, blocked tasks, overdue tasks, activity, notes).

Example 3: Using templates for repeated workflows

Create a template:

template_create({
  name: "feature_workflow",
  description: "Standard feature implementation",
  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 },
    { "title": "Document {feature}", "priority": "medium", "estimated_hours": 1 }
  ]
})

Apply it:

template_apply({ template_id: 1, epic_id: 2, variables: { "feature": "user auth" } })

Creates 4 tasks: "Design user auth API", "Implement user auth", "Write tests for user auth", "Document user auth".

Example 4: Task comments as 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 discussion 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.

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.

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.

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
- 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.

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.

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. Cycles are refused with the loop spelled out.

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

What you get:

• 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
• Notes and Activity — decisions and the complete change history
• Archived section — archived epics collapse below a divider, with a "show archived (N)" toggle
• 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
• 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.

How It Works

saga-mcp stores everything in a single SQLite file (.tracker.db) per project. The database is auto-created on first use with all tables and indexes — no migration step needed.

Hierarchy

Project
  └── Epic (feature/workstream)
        └── Task (unit of work)
              ├── Subtask (checklist item)
              ├── Comment (discussion thread)
              └── Dependencies (blocked by other tasks)

Task Dependencies

Tasks can depend on other tasks. When you set depends_on: [2, 3] on a task:

• The task is auto-blocked if any dependency isn't done
• When a dependency is marked done, downstream tasks are re-evaluated
• If all dependencies are met, the blocked task auto-unblocks to todo

Note Types

Notes replace scattered markdown files. Each note has a type:

Activity Log

Every create, update, and delete is automatically recorded:

{
  "summary": "Task 'Fix CORS issue' status: blocked -> done",
  "action": "status_changed",
  "entity_type": "task",
  "entity_id": 15,
  "field_name": "status",
  "old_value": "blocked",
  "new_value": "done",
  "created_at": "2026-02-21T18:30:00"
}

Privacy Policy

saga-mcp is a fully local, offline tool. It does not:

• Collect any user data
• Send any data to external servers
• Require internet access after installation
• Use analytics, telemetry, or tracking of any kind

All data is stored exclusively in the local SQLite file specified by DB_PATH. You own your data completely. Uninstalling saga-mcp and deleting the .tracker.db file removes all traces.

For questions about privacy, open an issue at https://github.com/spranab/saga-mcp/issues.

Development

git clone https://github.com/spranab/saga-mcp.git
cd saga-mcp
npm install
npm run build
DB_PATH=./test.db npm start

# the web UI against the same database
node dist/web/index.js ./test.db --open

npm test     # unit and integration, ~140 tests, no network
npm run e2e  # release gate: packs a tarball, installs it, drives the real binaries

Releasing

Publishing to npm is irreversible — a version number can never be reused — so it is the last step, and it is triggered by publishing a GitHub release, not by pushing a tag.

# 1. bump the version in package.json, manifest.json and server.json, then merge
# 2. tag it. Nothing is published yet.
git tag -a v1.9.0 -m "v1.9.0 — ..." && git push origin v1.9.0

# 3. verify the tagged build: this packs the tarball that would be published
#    and drives it end to end, including an upgrade from an older database.
npm run e2e

# 4. publish the release. This fires the publish workflow.
gh release create v1.9.0 --notes-file notes.md

The workflow re-runs the suite against the tagged commit, refuses a tag that does not match package.json, refuses a version already on npm, and sends a GitHub pre-release to the next dist-tag so it never becomes what npm install saga-mcp gives people. A failed publish can be retried against the same tag with gh workflow run "Publish to npm" -f tag=v1.9.0.

Support

• Issues: https://github.com/spranab/saga-mcp/issues
• Repository: https://github.com/spranab/saga-mcp

Related projects

Part of a set of agent infrastructure built by one person, meant to be used together:

• yantrikdb-mcp — persistent cognitive memory for the same agent: what it learned, not what it planned.
• brainstorm-mcp — multi-model debate before you commit a plan to the tracker.
• swarmcode — real-time channel between Claude Code instances on different machines.
• truenas-mcp — 278 TrueNAS SCALE actions behind one hierarchical tool.
• mcpier — self-hosted MCP control plane that keeps API keys off your clients.

License

MIT