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Use mokata in Cowork

Cowork supports plugins, so mokata installs there the same way it does in Claude Code — as a plugin from the mostack marketplace. The pipeline, the gated writes, the knowledge graph, and the memory all work. One capability differs, and mokata is honest about it: the PreToolUse secret-guard hook may not be enforced in Cowork, so durable-write protection there relies on mokata's own gated write path rather than the hook. This guide covers the install, the /mokata:* surface, and exactly what degrades and why.

Install

In Cowork, add the marketplace and install the plugin:

/plugin marketplace add JasGujral/mokata-oss
/plugin install mokata@mostack

(That's the public mirror. From a local clone you can add the marketplace by directory path instead.) After installing, restart the session so the commands load.

mokata setup is not used for Cowork — setup is for harnesses that have no plugin path. Cowork has one, so the plugin install above is the supported route.

The /mokata:* surface

Everything the plugin ships is harness-agnostic — the same templates/commands/*.md and the bundled mokata-mcp server — so the slash commands work in Cowork:

  • /mokata:brainstorm, /mokata:spec, /mokata:test, /mokata:develop, /mokata:review, /mokata:ship — the spec-driven TDD pipeline.
  • /mokata:refine, /mokata:debug, /mokata:bug, /mokata:optimize, /mokata:onboard, /mokata:version.
  • The MCP tools (init, memory, vault, spec-check, …) — including the gated write tools, which scan for secrets, human-gate, and audit inside the tool.

Run mokata harness cowork any time to see Cowork's capability matrix.

Capability differences vs Claude Code

mokata models Cowork honestly through its harness boundary — it never pretends a capability exists. Cowork's profile:

Capability Cowork Notes
commands ✅ the /mokata:* slash commands load from the plugin
context_injection ✅ the SessionStart briefing is injected
subagents ✅ parallel/fan-out execution is available
hooks ❌ the PreToolUse secret-guard hook may not run in Cowork

What this means in practice. In Claude Code, the secret-guard runs as a PreToolUse hook on every Write/Edit/Bash, blocking a secret before the tool acts. In Cowork that hook may not fire, so do not rely on it. mokata degrades clearly: its durable writes still go through the universal WriteGate (used by mokata memory, the vault, the MCP write tools, and the CLI), which scans for secrets, requires human approval, and records the decision to the audit ledger — independent of any hook. So a secret in a mokata-gated write is still blocked in Cowork; a secret written by a raw tool call that bypasses mokata is not caught the way the Claude Code hook would catch it. When in doubt, route durable writes through mokata's gated paths (the CLI / the MCP write tools), not raw edits.

Everything stays local-first — nothing leaves the machine unless you wire an external tool.

Validate it loaded

  • The commands appear under /mokata:* in the command list.
  • mokata harness lists cowork with the matrix above.
  • mokata doctor reports the resolved config/providers.

If a capability you need isn't available in your Cowork build, mokata will say so plainly rather than silently no-op — and the gated CLI/MCP path is always the fallback.