About gut
gut is a Python library and MCP server for making typed judgments such as yes/no, categories, and ratings with small models. It can return UNSURE and route uncertain cases to a person.
Key features
- 01Make yes/no, category, and rating judgments
- 02Return uncertainty for human review
- 03Batch decisions across many items
- 04Configure multiple model backends
- 05Filter items from the command line
Use cases
- 01Flag likely spam comments
- 02Route tickets to the right team
- 03Prioritize requests by urgency
- 04Review many files or search results
MCP support
The optional gutfeel-mcp package provides an MCP server for agents to use gut's judgment capabilities.
Configuration
Local server config is the same for every client. Copy it into your client’s MCP config file.
uvx gutfeel-mcpTYPESAFE_API_KEYSecretKey for TypeSafe's Jev, the model asked by default when it is setGUT_BACKENDAnother model: openrouter, ollaya, clm, ollama, openai, openai-decisions, zeroshot or transformersGUT_MODELThe model to ask; required for ollaya, ollama and openaiGUT_BASE_URLThe server's URL, for ollaya, ollama and openaiOPENROUTER_API_KEYSecretKey for Jev through OpenRouter, with GUT_BACKEND=openrouterLocal servers need a runtime on your machine (e.g. Node.js 18+). Config file locations differ by client; see your client’s docs.
Tools
4Saved tool list · updated 2w ago
| Parameter | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| lean | any | No | Which way to err when unsure is not allowed. |
| stakes | any | No | How sure the model must be before an answer counts. Needs ask_human. |
| subject | string | Yes | The text to judge: an email, a comment, a diff. |
| question | string | Yes | A short claim about the text, e.g. "asks for a refund". Not an open question. |
| ask_human | boolean | No | Allow the outcome `unsure` when the model cannot tell. Off by default. |
Details
From the project READMEJudgment calls as one line of Python — built for Jev, and running on any small model.
Try it in your browser → The site runs gut's local model in the page: no key, no server.
Your code keeps running into questions that aren't logic: Is this comment spam? Which team owns this ticket? How urgent is it? Is the agent's task done? Until now there were three answers:
- Regex and keyword rules — free and instant, and wrong the moment someone phrases it differently.
- A frontier LLM — understands anything, at seconds and cents a call, with prose to parse.
- Train a classifier — cheap to run, once you have the labelled data, the pipeline and the week.
There is a fourth: a small model made for exactly these questions. TypeSafe AI's
Jev answers typed questions directly — a probability for yes, a
distribution over options, a score on a scale — with nothing to generate or parse, billed on input
only. gut is built around it, and makes it a line of code:
import gut
gut.configure(backend=gut.JevBackend()) # or just set TYPESAFE_API_KEY
if gut.likely(comment, "is spam"):
hide(comment)
No prompt, no parsing, no threshold — and no model named at the call site.
Three questions
gut.likely(ticket, "is a bug report") # yes / no
gut.classify(ticket, Team) # which one — an Enum
gut.rate(ticket, ["can wait", "this week", "right now"]) # how much
It knows when it doesn't know
A regex never hesitates, and neither does an LLM. gut can:
match gut.likely(email, "the customer threatens to cancel", ask_human=True):
case gut.YES: escalate(email)
case gut.NO: auto_reply(email)
case gut.UNSURE: send_to_a_person(email)
Say how careful to be in words — lean="yes", stakes="high" — and gut works out the thresholds.
A thousand subjects, one line
spam = gut.each(comments).likely("is spam") # one decision per comment, in order
teams = gut.each(tickets).classify(Team)
Jev gets concurrent requests, a local model batched passes, and nothing already cached is asked
twice. @gut.semantic does the same for several questions about one subject.
Jev first, any model
Jev is the model gut is designed around. It is not the only one: the model is configuration, and
the same line runs unchanged on any of these.
gut.configure(backend=gut.JevBackend()) # TypeSafe AI's Jev
gut.configure(backend=gut.JevBackend.openrouter()) # Jev, through OpenRouter
gut.configure(backend=gut.JevBackend.ollaya("winnow:e4b")) # open decision model, Ollaya
gut.configure(backend=gut.ZeroShotBackend()) # NLI model, on your CPU
gut.configure(backend=gut.TransformersBackend("Qwen/Qwen3-0.6B")) # small LLM, on your machine
gut.configure(backend=gut.OpenAICompatibleBackend( # Ollama, vLLM, llama.cpp
"qwen2.5:1.5b", base_url="http://localhost:11434/v1"))
gut.configure(backend=gut.OpenAICompatibleBackend("gpt-4.1-nano")) # OpenAI
gut.configure(backend=gut.OpenAIDecisionsBackend()) # OpenAI's Decisions API
Or several at once. Cascade asks the cheapest model first and passes on only what it is unsure of:
gut.configure(backend=gut.Cascade(
gut.ZeroShotBackend(), # free and local: settles the obvious
gut.JevBackend(), # sees only what the first could not
))
Every answer is a model's own probabilities, never parsed from text, and decision.model names the model that gave it. Your own model can be a backend too: here is how.
Install
pip install "gutfeel[jev]" # + JevBackend: TypeSafe, OpenRouter or Ollaya
pip install "gutfeel[local]" # + ZeroShotBackend and TransformersBackend (PyTorch)
pip install gutfeel # core: any OpenAI-compatible server; FakeBackend for tests
pip install gutfeel-mcp # + the MCP server, gutfeel-mcp
The package on PyPI is gutfeel (gut was taken); the import is plain import gut. No model at hand? gut.FakeBackend(answers={"is spam": 0.97}) answers from fixtures, for tests.
From a shell, and for agents
The big model thinks; the small one decides, fast. An agent with gut judges a thousand files,
commits or search results in one command instead of reading each one itself:
git ls-files | gut filter "retries failed requests" --read-files --max-cost 0.50
claude mcp add gut --env TYPESAFE_API_KEY=your-key -- uvx gutfeel-mcp # MCP Registry: io.github.Kungie/gut
npx skills add Kungie/gut --skill gut # teaches a coding agent when to reach for it
Docs
The documentation, one page per idea: Getting started · Backends · Knowing when it doesn't know · Asking everything at once · Async · Exact costs · Caching and observability · Command line · MCP server · Honest limitations. examples/ runs the same code on every backend.
Status and license
Pre-1.0, Apache-2.0. Every code block in these docs runs in the test suite · contributing
Comments
New to MCP?
From what the protocol is to installing your first server, these answers cover most first questions.
An open protocol that defines how AI applications connect to external tools and data in a uniform way. Clients talk to the model; MCP servers provide tools, resources and prompt templates. They exchange standard messages, so one server can be reused by many clients.