A workspace built out of frustration
For years, I used Pieces OS to save and share code snippets. It was the best fit for my work at the time. Eventually, recurring problems and difficult releases made it harder for me to rely on it.
I was also using Warp. As its direction shifted towards an AI-native terminal, I found myself being asked to pay for features I did not want, while the experience still fell short of what I needed. The tools were moving in a direction that no longer matched my work.
That prompted a practical question: could I build a CLI that did exactly what I needed? Coding agents made it easier to attempt. They helped me build the software; AI was not the purpose of the first version.
From saved snippets to running infrastructure
The first version brought my code snippets into a workspace where I could use and execute them. It also gave me a place to test DevOps scenarios, with a particular focus on Terraform scripts and provisioning or deploying systems to AWS, Google Cloud and other environments.
Those were the original requirements: keep useful code close at hand, run it, and test the infrastructure workflows I used in practice. The early application earned its place by solving those everyday problems.
Besen / Broom: understanding and reclaiming disk space
The next addition came from another subscription renewal. I used CleanMyMac, but the rising cost made me reconsider which functions I actually needed and whether I could build them into my own workspace.
That became Broom, or Besen in German, a disk-cleaning tool inside xNaut. It showed me where storage was being used and let me remove unwanted files.
The first AI feature
AI entered the application through a local assistant for command-line tasks. I used it to organise files, create folder structures and set up new projects. This was the first point at which AI became part of the product itself.
From there, more of the tools I was building for software development found their way into the same application. File management, project setup and development work were already connected in practice; the workspace began to reflect that.
How that became xNaut today
Over the following year, those additions grew into the development workspace xNaut is today. Its scope now includes tickets, coding agents, separate worktrees, verification and human review. The common thread is still the original need: keep the tools and the work connected, and be able to inspect the result.
Let's explore what xNaut has become.