I got tired of being the "Makefile person" at work, so I built a polyglot task runner with built-in MCP support for AI agents

I got tired of being the "Makefile person" at work (despite being no expert myself), so I built a polyglot task runner that speaks shell, Python, and Node, and has built-in MCP support for AI agents. It's called run. It's a single Rust binary with zero dependencies and instant startup. What it looks like No YAML, no arcane DSLs—just standard functions in a Runfile: ```bash @desc Run workspace tests with optional filter test(filter = "") { cargo test $filter } @desc Deploy to an environment deploy(env) ./scripts/deploy.sh $env ``` Adding # @desc comments automatically turns functions into typed, structured tools exposed to Claude Code, Cursor, or any agent over MCP via run --serve-mcp. What • Polyglot: Write tasks in shell, Python, or Node—whatever fits the job. • Cross-Platform: Clean platform-specific implementations (Windows vs Unix). • Built-in MCP Server: AI agents discover and run your project tools with a strict, typed schema for args/options. Zero hallucinated flags. • No Config Bloat: No YAML, no complex build system to learn—just functions with names. Why? • Make's syntax is arcane ($(word 2,$(subst -, ,$@)) anyone?) • npm scripts break constantly across OS environments (especially Windows). • Every repo at work uses a completely different ad-hoc approach. • I wanted something AI coding agents could reliably discover and execute without blowing 2,500 tokens of context reading READMEs. We have a few teams using it at work now (more or less fully replacing Make and npm scripts), and I'm using it on all my personal projects, including run itself. It works incredibly well, and it's a genuine pleasure to see how naturally and speedily coding agents navigate project tools for everything from running tests to database migrations. Would love feedback from the community; contributions and issue reports are more than welcome! Install: ```bash cargo install run or brew install nihilok/tap/runtool or yay -S runtool ``` • GitHub: https://github.com/nihilok/run • Docs: https://runtool.dev/docs