@zensation/cli

@zenai/cli

ZenAI in your Terminal -- an AI agent for knowledge work, powered by Claude.

@zenai/cli brings the full power of ZenAI to the command line: an interactive REPL with tool execution, filesystem access, and optional backend integration for persistent Memory, Knowledge Graph, and RAG retrieval.

Features

• Interactive REPL -- conversational agent loop with streaming responses
• One-shot mode -- pipe tasks directly: zenai "summarize this project"
• 6 Filesystem Tools -- read, write, edit files; list directories; search content; run commands
• Backend Bridge -- connect to a ZenAI backend for Memory (remember/recall), Knowledge Graph, and Idea Search
• Project Detection -- auto-detects 11 project types (TypeScript, Python, Rust, Go, etc.)
• Session Persistence -- conversation history saved to .zenai/ for continuity across sessions

Installation

npm install -g @zenai/cli

Requires Node.js 18 or later.

Quick Start

# Start interactive REPL
zenai

# One-shot mode
zenai "what files are in this project?"

# With backend connection
ZENAI_BACKEND_URL=http://localhost:3000 zenai

Environment Variables

Variable	Required	Default	Description
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	Yes	--	Claude API key
ZENAI_MODEL	No	claude-sonnet-4-20250514	Model to use
ZENAI_MAX_TOKENS	No	4096	Max response tokens
ZENAI_MAX_ITERATIONS	No	25	Max agent loop iterations
ZENAI_BACKEND_URL	No	--	ZenAI backend URL for Memory/KG
ZENAI_BACKEND_API_KEY	No	--	API key for backend access

REPL Commands

Command	Description
/clear	Clear conversation history
/status	Show session info and tool availability
exit	End session

Tools

The agent has access to 6 filesystem tools, executed locally:

Tool	Description
read_file	Read file contents with line numbers
write_file	Create or overwrite a file
edit_file	Apply targeted edits to existing files
list_files	List directory contents with glob support
search_content	Search file contents with regex patterns
run_command	Execute shell commands with timeout

When connected to a ZenAI backend, additional tools become available:

• remember / recall -- persistent memory across sessions
• search_ideas -- semantic search over your knowledge base
• web_search -- web search via backend proxy

Architecture

The CLI follows the Claude Code agent loop pattern: a single-threaded loop that sends messages to Claude, executes tool calls, feeds results back, and repeats until the model produces a final text response or the iteration limit is reached.

User Input --> Agent Loop --> Claude API
                  ^              |
                  |         Tool Calls
                  |              |
              Tool Results <-- Execute

Session state and conversation history persist in .zenai/ within your project directory.

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE for details.

Links

• ZenAI -- the full AI operating system
• ZenBrain -- open-source memory algorithms
• Zensation AI -- project homepage