Cascade Agent

A natural language command-line interface for the Cascade Protocol — ask in plain English, get health data work done.

▶ Convert all FHIR files in ~/records to Cascade RDF and save them to ~/output

  ⚙ shell $ mkdir -p ~/output && for f in ~/records/*.json; do cascade convert ...
  ↳ (command succeeded — 1201 files converted)

Done. 1,201 patient records converted and saved to ~/output as .ttl files.

What it does

Cascade Agent sits between you and the Cascade Protocol CLI (cascade). Instead of remembering exact commands and flags, you describe what you want in plain English and the agent figures out the right sequence of CLI calls to make it happen.

It understands tasks like:

• "Convert all the FHIR bundles in this folder to Cascade RDF/Turtle"
• "Validate these .ttl files and tell me which ones have errors"
• "Initialize a new data pod at ~/my-health-data"
• "How many condition records are in this patient file?"
• "Show me the medications from this FHIR record"

The agent streams responses in real time, shows you every command it runs, and maintains context across a conversation so you can follow up naturally.

The Cascade Protocol

Cascade Protocol is an open standard for secure, interoperable personal health data. It provides:

• Semantic vocabularies for clinical records, wellness data, medications, lab results, insurance, and more — built on FHIR, SNOMED CT, LOINC, and W3C RDF
• Local-first storage — all data stays on your device, encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM
• W3C PROV-O provenance on every record so you always know where data came from
• A CLI and SDKs for Swift (iOS/macOS), TypeScript, and Python

Cascade Agent specifically wraps the Cascade CLI — the command-line tool for converting, validating, and managing health data pods.

Relevant docs:

• Cascade Protocol Overview
• Clinical Vocabulary (v1.7) — EHR records, medications, labs, conditions
• Health Vocabulary (v2.3) — device data, wellness observations
• Security & Compliance — HIPAA alignment, local-first architecture
• CLI Reference — full command documentation

Requirements

• Node.js 18 or later
• Cascade Protocol CLI installed globally:

  npm install -g @the-cascade-protocol/cli

• An API key from at least one supported AI provider — or use the built-in local model (see Providers)

Installation

# From the repository
npm install
npm run build
npm install -g .

# Or link for development
npm link

Quick start

1. Add your API key

cascade-agent login

The interactive prompt walks you through choosing a provider and entering your key. Keys are saved to ~/.config/cascade-agent/config.json.

You can also skip the prompt with an environment variable:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
export GOOGLE_AI_API_KEY=AI...

2. Start the REPL

cascade-agent

3. Or run a one-shot command

cascade-agent "Convert all FHIR files in ~/Downloads/records to Cascade RDF"

Usage

Interactive REPL

cascade-agent                   # uses active provider and model
cascade-agent -p google         # use Google Gemini for this session
cascade-agent -p ollama         # use a local Ollama model

Inside the REPL:

One-shot mode

cascade-agent "validate ~/health-data/patient.ttl"
cascade-agent -p openai -m gpt-4o "how many lab results in this record?"

Providers

Cascade Agent supports five providers. Use whichever you have access to — including two completely free, no-account-required options.

Note: AI provider subscriptions (Claude.ai, ChatGPT Plus, Gemini Advanced) are separate from API access and cannot be used directly with this tool. You need an API key from the developer console of each provider. Google AI Studio offers a free API key with generous rate limits.

Local provider (no API key, fully on-device)

The local provider runs Qwen3.5-2B (Q4_K_M quantisation) entirely on your machine via node-llama-cpp. No account, no network calls, no cost. Ollama is not required.

Setup:

# Install the native inference library (Apple Silicon / Intel / Windows / Linux)
npm install node-llama-cpp

# Download the model (~1.5 GB — one-time, cached at ~/.config/cascade-agent/models/)
cascade-agent login --provider local

# Use it
cascade-agent -p local

Platform support:

Model: Qwen3.5-2B-Q4_K_M sourced from unsloth/Qwen3.5-2B-GGUF on Hugging Face. 2 billion parameter instruction-tuned model with native tool-call support. Achieves 98% score (10/10 cases) on the Cascade Agent eval suite.

Limitations vs cloud models:

• Slower (6–15s per response on Apple Silicon, vs <2s for cloud)
• Less capable on complex multi-step reasoning
• Requires node-llama-cpp as an optional npm dependency

Document intelligence (EHR extraction)

cascade-agent serve includes a clinical narrative extraction service powered by the same Qwen3.5-2B model. When you run cascade-agent serve for the first time without the model downloaded, it will prompt you to download it automatically:

  No extraction model found.
  Clinical narrative extraction requires Qwen3.5-2B (~1.5 GB).
  This is a one-time download — the same model powers the conversational agent.

  Download model now? [Y/n]:

The model is shared — if you already set up the local provider via cascade-agent login, cascade-agent serve will find the model and skip the download prompt.

Note: Ollama is not used for extraction. The service runs node-llama-cpp in-process, which supports Qwen3.5 models directly. Qwen3.5 is not yet available in Ollama.

Configure a provider

cascade-agent login                    # interactive setup
cascade-agent login --provider google  # configure a specific provider

Switch the active provider

cascade-agent provider                 # list all providers (shows which are configured)
cascade-agent provider openai          # set OpenAI as active

Choose a model

cascade-agent model                    # show current model and shortcuts
cascade-agent model flash              # gemini-2.0-flash
cascade-agent model opus               # claude-opus-4-6
cascade-agent model --provider openai o3

Model shortcuts:

Any full model ID is also accepted (e.g. cascade-agent model gemini-1.5-flash-8b).

What the agent can do

The agent has access to two tools it can invoke on your behalf:

shell

Runs bash commands — primarily the cascade CLI, but also general file operations like ls, find, mkdir, wc. For batch jobs it will write a shell loop rather than making individual calls per file, so converting thousands of records is a single tool call.

Cascade CLI operations the agent knows about:

cascade convert --from fhir --to cascade <file.json>   # FHIR → RDF/Turtle
cascade validate <file.ttl>                            # SHACL validation
cascade pod init <path>                                # create a data pod
cascade pod list                                       # list pods
cascade capabilities                                   # show all commands

read_file

Reads the contents of a file (up to 20 KB) so the agent can inspect records, check validation output, or answer questions about specific data.

Configuration file

Settings are stored at ~/.config/cascade-agent/config.json:

{
  "activeProvider": "google",
  "providers": {
    "anthropic": { "apiKey": "sk-ant-...", "model": "claude-sonnet-4-6" },
    "openai":    { "apiKey": "sk-...",     "model": "gpt-4o" },
    "google":    { "apiKey": "AI...",      "model": "gemini-2.0-flash" },
    "ollama":    { "baseUrl": "http://localhost:11434", "model": "llama3.2" },
    "local":     { "baseUrl": "/Users/you/.config/cascade-agent/models/hf_unsloth_Qwen3.5-2B-Q4_K_M.gguf" }
  }
}

For the local provider, baseUrl holds the path to the .gguf model file. Run cascade-agent login --provider local to download the model and set this automatically.

Environment variables take precedence over stored keys:

Project structure

src/
├── cli.ts                  Entry point — commands: login, provider, model, serve, review, REPL/one-shot
├── config.ts               Config file read/write, model aliases
├── agent.ts                Thin orchestration layer
├── repl.ts                 Interactive readline REPL
├── tools.ts                Tool definitions (shell, read_file) + execution
├── system-prompt.ts        Shared system prompt for cloud providers
├── providers/
│   ├── types.ts            Provider interface and shared types
│   ├── anthropic.ts        Anthropic Claude implementation
│   ├── openai-compat.ts    OpenAI / Google / Ollama implementation
│   ├── local.ts            Local Qwen3.5-2B via node-llama-cpp (also used by extraction)
│   └── index.ts            Factory function + default models
├── services/
│   ├── document-intelligence.ts   Clinical narrative extraction via node-llama-cpp
│   ├── extraction-pipeline.ts     Two-stage pipeline with confidence routing
│   └── terminology-normalizer.ts  Lab → LOINC, condition → ICD-10 normalization
└── commands/
    ├── serve.ts            HTTP server (POST /extract, GET /review, Bonjour)
    └── review.ts           Terminal review mode for extraction queue

eval/                       Rerunnable eval suite (10 cases, any provider)
├── runner.ts               CLI: --provider --model --filter --json
├── harness.ts              Single-case executor
├── reporter.ts             ANSI table + JSON output
├── cases/                  Test case definitions
└── fixtures/               Static test data (sample.ttl, sample.json)

Eval suite

A rerunnable benchmark is included for measuring model quality. Run it against any provider:

# Google (baseline)
npx tsx eval/runner.ts --provider google --json

# Local Qwen3.5-2B
npx tsx eval/runner.ts --provider local --json

# Specific cases only
npx tsx eval/runner.ts --provider local --filter shell-single,pod-query

# List all cases
npx tsx eval/runner.ts --list

Results (as of March 2026):

The 10 eval cases cover: single tool calls, multi-step chains, file reading, mixed tools, pod query, error recovery, and four NLU knowledge questions.

Links

• Cascade Protocol — protocol home
• Documentation — vocabularies, CLI reference, security
• Cascade Protocol Schemas — full ontology reference
• Security & Compliance — HIPAA, GDPR, local-first architecture