# ishaan1013/shadow

Background coding agent and real-time web interface

Repository: https://github.com/ishaan1013/shadow
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/ishaan1013-shadow
Homepage: https://www.ishaand.com/shadow
Language: TypeScript
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-03-19T20:29:22+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 51/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 73, release rhythm 35, longevity 29
- inputs: {"age_days": 417, "days_push": 167, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1496, forks 178 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:53.665063+00:00)

## What it is
Shadow is an open-source background coding agent that autonomously understands, edits, and contributes to existing GitHub codebases, generating branches, commits, and pull requests. It combines a real-time Next.js chat interface (terminal, file explorer, task tracking) with isolated execution environments, from local runs to hardware-isolated Kata QEMU micro-VMs orchestrated on Kubernetes.

## Use cases
- run an AI coding agent in the background on my GitHub repo
- self-host an open-source alternative to cloud coding agents
- have an agent open pull requests with AI-authored commits on existing codebases
- execute long-running coding tasks in isolated sandboxed VMs
- chat with an agent in real time while it edits files and runs terminal commands
- automatically document a codebase with an auto-generated wiki
- build a searchable memory of repository-specific knowledge for an LLM agent

## When to choose
- you want a self-hosted, open-source background coding agent rather than a closed cloud service
- your workflow is GitHub-centric and you want automated branch, commit, and PR generation
- you need strong isolation (Kata QEMU micro-VMs, Kubernetes) for untrusted agent execution
- you value full visibility into agent context, tool calls, and the file/terminal workspace

## When to avoid
- you only need inline autocomplete or quick edits inside your IDE rather than autonomous background tasks
- you want a lightweight CLI agent without deploying Next.js, PostgreSQL, and optionally Kubernetes
- your code cannot be connected to GitHub or you cannot provide LLM provider API keys
- you need a fully offline agent with local-only models, since it targets hosted providers like Anthropic, OpenAI, and OpenRouter

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: agent-framework, chat-interface, rag, developer-tools
- domain: artificial-intelligence, large-language-models, developer-tools
- platform: self-hosted
- tags: ai-coding-agent, autonomous-agent, github-integration, code-generation, pull-requests, sandboxed-execution, micro-vm, kata-containers, real-time-ui, nextjs, websocket, multi-provider-llm, background-tasks, code-search, turborepo, ai-agents, nodejs, web-server, kubernetes

## Member repositories
- ishaan1013/shadow (main) score 51

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:53.665063+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T04:33:13.271147+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/ishaan1013/shadow (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:53.665063+00:00, sha 17e97b016f31)
  - homepage: https://www.ishaand.com/shadow (fetched 2026-08-29T11:38:51.057086+00:00, sha 418637bb18fb)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.