Edict is an MIT-licensed Python orchestration system that runs multi-agent LLM work through the Tang-dynasty Three Departments and Six Ministries, splitting the job across eleven business roles plus one compatibility role so that planning, review, dispatch, and execution are handled by separate agents, and it is built for teams running OpenClaw that need every hand-off between agents to be reviewable, auditable, and interruptible.

What it is

Edict layers a governance structure onto OpenClaw, the agent runtime named by its homepage and topics. Instead of letting agents converse freely, it assigns fixed duties: the Crown Prince (太子) sorts incoming messages and only creates a task when the message is an actual edict, the Zhongshu province (中书省) plans, the Menxia province (门下省) reviews, the Shangshu province (尚书省) dispatches, and seven executing ministries (户, 礼, 兵, 刑, 工, 吏, plus the morning-court officer) carry the work out before it returns as a memorial. Installation creates a workspace per role, writes a SOUL.md defining that role's persona, workflow rules, and data-cleaning conventions, and registers the agents together with a permission matrix into openclaw.json.

The problem it attacks is the "finish and hand over" model that the README attributes to CrewAI, MetaGPT, and AutoGen, where agents talk among themselves and the user receives a result with no record of how it was produced and no way to intervene. Edict replaces that with an institutional review gate: the Menxia province checks whether the plan and its subtask breakdown are sound, rejects substandard output outright rather than warning about it, and forces a rework loop until the plan passes. That gate is part of the architecture, not an optional plugin, so every edict passes through it before execution begins.

Key capabilities

• Twelve-role agent hierarchy with a strict permission matrix defining which agent may send messages to which, written into openclaw.json at install time.
• State transition validation enforced by kanban_update.py, which rejects illegal jumps between task statuses rather than accepting them silently.
• The 军机处 dashboard with ten panels, including the 旨意看板 Kanban, 省部调度 monitor, 奏折阁 memorial archive, 旨库 template library, 官员总览 officials overview, 天下要闻 news feed, 模型配置 model config, 技能配置 skills config, 小任务 sessions, 上朝仪式 ceremony, and 朝堂议政 court discussion.
• Per-agent model switching from the dashboard, applied after an automatic Gateway restart in roughly five seconds.
• Task intervention controls that allow an edict to be halted, cancelled, or resumed while it is in flight.
• Agent health monitoring through heartbeat badges marked active, stalled, or alert, alongside activity and token-consumption rankings per official.
• The 奏折阁 archive, which files finished edicts with a five-stage timeline of 圣旨, 中书, 门下, 六部, and 回奏, with one-click copy to Markdown, plus nine preset edict templates in the 旨库 carrying parameter forms and estimated time and cost.

Who uses it and how

• Teams already running OpenClaw that install via install.sh and inherit the full agent workspaces, role personalities, and permission registration without hand-wiring each agent.
• Operators who want to inspect the workflow before committing, using the Docker image with preloaded simulated data to browse the dashboard at localhost:7891.
• Organisations issuing work through Feishu (飞书), where edicts are created from chat, results return as memorials, and the 天下要闻 panel pushes a daily digest of technology and finance news back to the same channel.
• Managers tracking spend and throughput across a fleet of roles, using the token leaderboard, activity figures, completion counts, and session statistics in the officials overview to see which departments are carrying load.
• Teams that want multiple departments on the record for a decision, using 朝堂议政 to run an LLM-driven multi-round discussion where each ministry argues from its own remit and the conclusion with the discussion record is kept.

Getting started

The fastest path is the published Docker image, run as docker run -p 7891:7891 cft0808/sansheng-demo and then opened at http://localhost:7891. For the full system, clone cft0808/edict and run chmod +x install.sh && ./install.sh, which requires OpenClaw already installed, Python 3.10 or later, and macOS or Linux.

How it compares

The README positions Edict directly against CrewAI, MetaGPT, and AutoGen, claiming that none of them offers a real-time Kanban view, task intervention, or agent health monitoring, that CrewAI has no review mechanism while MetaGPT's is optional and AutoGen relies on human-in-the-loop, and that Edict adds hot model switching, skills management, and news aggregation that the others lack. Its stated differentiators are institutional review, full observability, and live intervention, with deployment rated easier than MetaGPT and comparable to or simpler than the other two. No list of paid products is given, so the honest framing is that Edict is one open-source option among several agent frameworks in this registry, distinguished mainly by its mandatory review stage and its dashboard rather than by any licensing or hosting advantage.

When to use it — and when not to

Adopting Edict means adopting OpenClaw as well, along with a Python 3.10+ runtime on macOS or Linux, and on x86 or amd64 hosts the demo image needs the --platform linux/amd64 flag or the bundled compose file to avoid an exec format error. The Docker demo ships with simulated data, so it demonstrates the interface rather than production behaviour, and the install path assumes you can create and maintain the per-role workspaces that the script writes. Anyone who wants a single lightweight agent, dislikes the imperial vocabulary threading through state, roles, and UI, or cannot run OpenClaw should look elsewhere; the repository also carries 18 open issues, so some rough edges are live.

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你 (皇上) → 太子 (分拣) → 中书省 (规划) → 门下省 (审议) → 尚书省 (派发) → 六部 (执行) → 回奏

docker run -p 7891:7891 cft0808/sansheng-demo

exec /usr/local/bin/python3: exec format error

docker run --platform linux/amd64 -p 7891:7891 cft0808/sansheng-demo

docker compose up

git clone https://github.com/cft0808/edict.git
cd edict
chmod +x install.sh && ./install.sh

# 方式 1：一键启动（推荐）
chmod +x start.sh && ./start.sh

# 方式 2：分别启动
bash scripts/run_loop.sh &      # 数据刷新循环
python3 dashboard/server.py     # 看板服务器

# 打开浏览器
open http://127.0.0.1:7891

# 安装 systemd 服务
sudo cp edict.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable edict
sudo systemctl start edict

# 或使用管理脚本
bash edict.sh start    # 启动
bash edict.sh status   # 查看状态
bash edict.sh restart  # 重启
bash edict.sh stop     # 停止

                           ┌───────────────────────────────────┐
                           │          👑 皇上（你）              │
                           │     Feishu · Telegram · Signal     │
                           └─────────────────┬─────────────────┘
                                             │ 下旨
                           ┌─────────────────▼─────────────────┐
                           │          � 太子 (taizi)            │
                           │    分拣：闲聊直接回 / 旨意建任务      │
                           └─────────────────┬─────────────────┘
                                             │ 传旨
                           ┌─────────────────▼─────────────────┐
                           │          📜 中书省 (zhongshu)       │
                           │       接旨 → 规划 → 拆解子任务       │
                           └─────────────────┬─────────────────┘
                                             │ 提交审核
                           ┌─────────────────▼─────────────────┐
                           │          🔍 门下省 (menxia)         │
                           │       审议方案 → 准奏 / 封驳 🚫      │
                           └─────────────────┬─────────────────┘
                                             │ 准奏 ✅
                           ┌─────────────────▼─────────────────┐
                           │          📮 尚书省 (shangshu)       │
                           │     派发任务 → 协调六部 → 汇总回奏    │
                           └───┬──────┬──────┬──────┬──────┬───┘
                               │      │      │      │      │
                         ┌─────▼┐ ┌───▼───┐ ┌▼─────┐ ┌───▼─┐ ┌▼─────┐
                         │💰