Turnstone

Self-hosted, local-first orchestration for tool-using AI agents. Give LLMs real tools — shell, files, search, web — and run them across your own cluster with direct HTTP routing and interactive interfaces. Your code, your models, your data stay on hardware you control: no telemetry, no phone-home.

Named after the Ruddy Turnstone (Arenaria interpres) — a shorebird that flips stones to discover what's hiding underneath.

What is a harness?

ℋ :  s_{n+1} ~ T(s_n)   for n < τ_H

the primer → · the formalism →

Release Tracks

Track	Install	Docker	Description
Stable	pip install turnstone	ghcr.io/turnstonelabs/turnstone:stable	Production-grade. Bugfixes only.
Experimental	pip install turnstone --pre	ghcr.io/turnstonelabs/turnstone:experimental	New features. May have rough edges.

See docs/releasing.md for the full release process.

What it does

Turnstone gives LLMs tools — shell, files, search, web, planning — and orchestrates multi-turn conversations where the model investigates, acts, and reports.

• Local-first & private — runs entirely on hardware you control, with no telemetry and no phone-home. Point it at local models (vLLM, llama.cpp) or commercial APIs you hold the keys to — your prompts and data never transit a third party you didn't choose.
• Bring your own models — OpenAI-compatible APIs (vLLM, llama.cpp, NIM), the Anthropic Messages API, and Google Gemini, mixed freely per role
• Interactive sessions — terminal CLI or browser UI with parallel workstreams
• Cluster dashboard — real-time view of every node and workstream, with a rendezvous routing proxy
• Intent validation — an LLM judge (your model) grades every tool call with a risk assessment and evidence before it runs
• MCP support — external tool servers with native deferred loading (Anthropic/OpenAI) or BM25 fallback
• Team controls when you need them — optional RBAC, SSO, tool policies, and audit logs, all stored in your own database

Quickstart

pip install turnstone

# Terminal REPL
turnstone --base-url http://localhost:8000/v1

# Browser UI
turnstone-server --port 8080 --base-url http://localhost:8000/v1

# Cluster dashboard
turnstone-console --port 8090

For PostgreSQL (recommended for production):

export TURNSTONE_DB_BACKEND=postgresql
export TURNSTONE_DB_URL="postgresql+psycopg://user:pass@localhost:5432/turnstone"
turnstone-server --port 8080 --base-url http://localhost:8000/v1

Docker

One-line install — autodetects Ubuntu/Debian, Fedora/RHEL, Arch, and WSL, installs git + Docker if missing, generates secrets, and starts the stack:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/turnstonelabs/turnstone/main/run.sh | bash

Or, if you already have Docker, clone the repo and run it yourself:

docker compose up

That builds one image and brings up a full local cluster — PostgreSQL, console, Caddy, channel gateway, and 10 server nodes — with no .env required (it ships with insecure dev defaults). Open the dashboard at https://localhost:8443 (Caddy serves it over TLS with its own local CA — trust it once). Nodes boot without an LLM; add model backends from the console UI.

For production (released images from ghcr.io, real secrets required), use the bundled stack: docker compose -f turnstone/deploy/compose.yaml up.

See QUICKSTART.md for the install + troubleshooting walkthrough and docs/docker.md for Docker configuration.

Programmatic (SDK)

from turnstone.sdk import TurnstoneServer

with TurnstoneServer("http://localhost:8080", token="tok_xxx") as client:
    ws = client.create_workstream(name="demo")
    result = client.send_and_wait("Analyze the error logs", ws.ws_id, auto_approve=True)
    print(result.content)

Tools

Built-in tools for shell, files, search, web, memory, notifications, and autonomous sub-agents — plus external tools via MCP with native deferred loading. See docs/tools.md for the full reference and docs/mcp-registry.md for MCP configuration.

Architecture

Single-node: Client → Server (direct HTTP + SSE). No external dependencies beyond the database.

Multi-node: Client → Console (rendezvous routing proxy) → Server nodes. The console picks the target node for each workstream via rendezvous (HRW) hashing over the live service registry — pure function of (ws_id, live_nodes), no stored bucket state, deterministic across readers. A node join or drop only re-routes the keys that score highest on the affected node.

Component	Purpose
turnstone	Terminal CLI (REPL)
turnstone-server	Web UI + REST API + SSE events
turnstone-console	Cluster dashboard + routing proxy + admin panel
turnstone-channel	Channel gateway (Discord and Slack adapters)
turnstone-admin	User/token management CLI
turnstone-eval	Headless measurement — scores tool-use against expected actions
turnstone-optimizer	Prompt/tool optimizer (UCB self-modify loop over the eval substrate)
turnstone-doctor	LLM-backed cluster diagnostics

Diagrams

UML diagrams in docs/diagrams/:

Diagram	Description
System Context	Components and external dependencies
Package Structure	Python modules and dependency graph
Core Engine	SessionUI, ChatSession, LLMProvider
Conversation Turn	Message lifecycle through the engine
Tool Pipeline	Prepare / approve / execute
Workstream States	State machine transitions
Console Data Flow	Dashboard data collection
Deployment	Docker Compose topology
Auth	JWT, scopes, login flows
Channels	Discord / Slack adapters + routing
Judge	Intent validation pipeline
OIDC	SSO authorization code flow

Documentation

Topic	Link
Configuration reference	docs/settings.md
API reference	docs/api-reference.md
Docker deployment	docs/docker.md
Intent validation (judge)	docs/judge.md
Governance & RBAC	docs/governance.md
OIDC SSO	docs/oidc.md
TLS / mTLS	docs/tls.md
Channel integrations	docs/channels.md
Console dashboard	docs/console.md
Eval harness	docs/eval.md
Tools reference	docs/tools.md
MCP integration	docs/mcp-registry.md

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• An OpenAI-compatible API endpoint, Anthropic API key, or Google Gemini API key
• Optional: Discord / Slack channel integrations (pip install turnstone[discord,slack])
• Git LFS for cloning (diagram PNGs)

Support

Turnstone is free, Apache-2.0, and self-hosted — no paid tier, no telemetry, no upsell. If it saves you time or you'd like to help keep development moving, you can sponsor the project:

❤ Sponsor Turnstone → · one-off via PayPal

Sponsorship is entirely optional and funds maintenance, new features, and infrastructure. Prefer to contribute in other ways? Filing issues, improving docs, and pull requests help just as much.

Community

Questions, ideas, or want to show what you're building? Join us on Discord: discord.gg/Nh3bWMacaq.

License

Apache License 2.0, as of version 1.6.0. Versions 1.5.x and earlier remain under the Business Source License 1.1 they shipped with.