Phalanx CLI coordinates multiple AI agents for automated code-review cycles

Multi-Agent CLI for Automated Code Review

A developer has open-sourced Phalanx, a command-line interface that coordinates multiple AI agents from different providers to automate the code-review-fix cycle. The tool assigns specific roles to different models: Codex handles the actual coding for speed and throughput, Claude Opus performs code review to catch issues like race conditions and spec drift, and a Claude Sonnet agent orchestrates the entire process.

Key Implementation Details

Users define a team configuration file that assigns models to specific roles, then Phalanx runs the automated review loop. The developer built version 2 of Phalanx using Phalanx itself as a stress test, noting several practical challenges:

• Agents can die mid-task due to context limits
• Timeouts kill long reviews
• Retry logic adds significant complexity
• The review loop runs autonomously once agents remain stable

Codebones: Repository Compression Tool

To address token efficiency issues, the developer created Codebones, a companion tool that compresses repositories into structural maps. Instead of including full implementation bodies, Codebones generates:

• File tree structure
• Function signatures

This allows AI agents to understand the codebase shape without consuming excessive tokens. In testing, Codebones compressed a 177,000-token repository down to 30,000 tokens.

Cost and Limitations

Both tools run on $20/month flat plans with no additional API costs, compared to approximately $750/month the developer was spending on Cursor previously. Several important caveats were noted:

• Rate limits from both AI providers require careful batching
• Task scoping is critical—vague tasks produce poor results
• The approach is overkill for small fixes
• This setup works best for substantial code changes

The developer is exploring whether others are coordinating multiple AI providers or if most developers are sticking with single-provider solutions.

Source Information

Both tools are open source:

• Phalanx: github.com/creynir/phalanx
• Codebones: github.com/creynir/codebones