RTK workflow coverage

Sift is an independent tool-output compressor. Generic execution covers many of the same programs as RTK, but does not reproduce RTK's command-specific parsers, summaries or flags. This page describes the current source; it does not claim complete parity with every RTK command variant.

Workflow	Sift's current choice
Git, GitHub, builds, tests, linters, package managers, containers, cloud CLIs and search	sift COMMAND ARG... or sift run -- COMMAND ARG... forwards native argv. Generic compaction preserves text bytes or supported JSON values. Ordinary Git status and Cargo tests also have concise presentations, described below.
Long finite commands / terminal invocation	sift run --capture -- COMMAND ... waits for complete output within a combined 8 MiB bound, including terminal invocation. Progress is delayed; overflow switches to raw output. Default execution keeps interactive/progress passthrough.
Automatic integration	Completion adapters replace eligible final text; pre-execution adapters rewrite supported literal POSIX commands. Unsupported syntax stays unchanged. Gemini/VS Code rewrites are withheld for demonstrated approval-rule regressions; Cursor/Droid await qualification. Host qualification and scopes are listed in INTEGRATIONS.md.
Migrate RTK setup	sift init --replace-rtk --dry-run, then sift init --replace-rtk. Stock recognition, exact backups and preservation of unrelated settings; unsupported automatic migrations keep RTK active.
Plain input / streaming input	compact, pipe and plain read compact one file or stdin. filter [--capture] provides bounded stdin buffering and raw fallback. These do not load named RTK filters.
Selected file/JSON views	read --from N --lines N --grep TEXT; json --pointer POINTER --field KEY --limit N. Selection is explicit and can omit information. No implicit depth/string elision.
Summary / diagnostic / test views	summary -- COMMAND, err -- COMMAND, test -- COMMAND. Explicit head/tail or keyword/context views with omission labels; no inferred test result or tool-specific parser.
Persistent compaction	compact --protocol=json-v1; one tokenizer initialization, one response per input line.
Raw output	proxy COMMAND ... or run --raw -- COMMAND ....
Recovery	Explicit-encoding restoration, or opt-in originals through recall. Recall accepts unique ID prefixes, line windows and literal grep; retention caps are configurable. No rerun for recovery.
Local statistics	gain supports project, date, command and source filters, daily/weekly/monthly buckets, history, graph, JSON and CSV. Reports describe retained records; unmeasured output stays unmeasured.
Opportunity discovery	discover FILE... measures selected saved output. discover --history PATH --suggest inspects supported saved Claude/Codex histories and reports observed correction patterns without executing commands or writing rules.
Observed usage/cost import	ccusage --import FILE reports a selected local export separately from Sift's measured gain. Costs retain their source qualification; no projected savings or package fetching.
Setup diagnostics	doctor checks configured registration, executable availability and Sift settings. It does not prove the host loaded or trusted an adapter.
Distribution	Release binaries and curl/PowerShell installers, plus source builds and a source Homebrew formula. Signed/notarized macOS and Authenticode Windows releases, static Linux binaries.

Migrating command lines

Changing the executable name alone is not a supported migration. In particular, RTK's raw run and Sift's compacting run have different meanings.

Existing intent	Sift command
Run with raw output	sift proxy git diff
Execute a shell string	`sift run -- sh -c 'git log
Inspect test diagnostics	sift test --context 3 -- cargo test
Invoke the native test utility	sift run -- test -f README.md
Read a selected file window	sift read FILE --from 20 --lines 40
Select JSON rows/fields	sift json FILE --pointer /items --field name --limit 10
Run an installed package-local tool	sift pnpm exec tsc or sift npx --no-install tsc
Use a user-chosen filter	`your-command

Pass argv as separate arguments. proxy 'git diff' names one executable; it does not parse a shell string. Sift does not translate RTK's run -c, read --level, --ultra-compact, named pipe filters, formatter detection or tool-specific flags. Choose native flags, an explicit view, or a filter you already use. Package-runner behavior remains the responsibility of the runner you select.

Retained differences and limits

• Preservation and command presentations. Generic compaction keeps all supplied text bytes or supported JSON values. Ordinary Git status keeps all displayed paths and states with shorter formatting. Validated Cargo test output can omit passing test rows, with an omission count; failures, ignored tests and diagnostics remain. These command presentations must beat the reversible candidate by complete token count. Opt-in views can omit content; their output is not reversible compaction. Diagnostic/test views are heuristics, not replacements for RTK's framework parsers, parsed failure totals, cloud summaries or source-code views. Savings and convenience vary by workload.
• Structured formats. JSON compaction supports complete values and uniform top-level object arrays. JSON Pointer/field views add explicit selection, not YAML/XML/CSV/JSONL semantic codecs, nested-row factoring, SQL tables or schema inference. Other formats can still use reversible text compaction.
• Execution and policy. No deny-and-retry integration, blanket permission rule or automatic package fetch. Pre-execution rewrites cover a limited literal POSIX grammar; they do not establish universal permission equivalence. Codex on Unix does not expose the requested shell to the hook, so non-POSIX requests require disabling the pre-hook and using manual sift run. On Unix, signal exits become numeric 128 + signal rather than re-raising the signal in Sift. Separate stdout/stderr are preserved, not their total interleaving.
• Custom filtering. No custom TOML filter DSL, filter autoloading or trust framework. Explicit native filters compose with compact; Sift does not silently load project-supplied filters.
• Reporting. No projected bills, subscription/quota estimates or claims of fewer agent turns. Imported ccusage amounts may be calculated or incompletely priced. History suggestions cover known correction patterns; they do not learn general rules, join every asynchronous result or prove integration adoption. Dedicated recall-efficiency and host-decision audit reports are not implemented.
• Local state. No telemetry, summarization model, background daemon or automatic history scan. Original retention is opt-in. Sift does not import RTK's analytics database or recall store; migration leaves those files and the RTK executable available so you can read them with RTK.

Windows executable lookup includes .exe, .com, .cmd and .bat through PATH/PATHEXT; PowerShell scripts need an explicit interpreter. The exact Windows x64 release passed native batch-shim, argv/stream/status, finite-capture and console-input/output checks. The runner suite also covered Ctrl+Break, descendant cleanup and detached background children. These are scoped Windows GNU binary checks, not MSVC runtime or arbitrary terminal job-control qualification.

Do not alias rtk to sift. Keep existing integrations until their replacement scope and host activation are confirmed.