@zensation/cli

@zensation/cli

ZenAI CLI Agent — a terminal AI assistant with filesystem tools and, optionally, ZenAI's persistent memory and knowledge graph.

zenai is a terminal agent in the spirit of Claude Code: it runs an agentic loop over Claude with a set of filesystem tools, so you can read, search, and reason over a project from the command line. When pointed at a running ZenAI backend it additionally gains persistent memory and knowledge-graph tools; without one, it runs in local-only mode.

Install

npm install -g @zensation/cli

Or run it without installing:

npx @zensation/cli "summarize the TypeScript files in this folder"

Quick start

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...      # required

# Interactive REPL
zenai

# One-shot question
zenai "what does src/index.ts do?"

Usage

zenai                     Interactive REPL mode
zenai "your question"     One-shot mode
zenai --help              Show help
zenai --version           Show version

In the REPL:

Command	Description
/status	Show backend connection, tool count, project, and session
/clear	Clear the conversation history
/exit (or exit)	Exit

Configuration

All configuration is via environment variables:

Variable	Required	Default	Description
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	yes	—	Claude API key
ZENAI_MODEL	no	claude-sonnet-4-20250514	Claude model to use
ZENAI_MAX_TOKENS	no	4096	Maximum response tokens
ZENAI_MAX_ITERATIONS	no	25	Maximum agent-loop iterations
ZENAI_BACKEND_URL	no	—	ZenAI backend URL (enables memory + knowledge-graph tools)
ZENAI_BACKEND_API_KEY	no	—	ZenAI backend API key

Memory & knowledge graph (optional)

Set ZENAI_BACKEND_URL (and ZENAI_BACKEND_API_KEY) to connect to a running ZenAI backend. The agent then gains tools backed by ZenAI's 7-layer memory and knowledge graph, so context persists across sessions. If no backend is reachable, zenai reports local-only mode and runs with the filesystem tools alone.

Requirements

Node.js 22 or newer. Earlier versions cannot load this package: two of its dependencies ship as ES modules, and require() of an ES module only exists from Node 20.19 / 22.12 onwards. Versions up to 0.1.3 declared >=18, which was not achievable — 0.2.0 corrects the floor.

Part of ZenAI

This CLI lives in the ZenAI monorepo and builds on the same neuroscience-inspired memory system that ZenBrain publishes as standalone packages. Lab: zensation.ai · [e-mail]

About ZenBrain

ZenBrain is a seven-layer, neuroscience-derived memory architecture for LLM agents, built as zero-dependency TypeScript and published under Apache-2.0. On LongMemEval-500 it wins all nine head-to-head answer-quality comparisons against Letta, Mem0 and A-Mem (three competitors x three LLM judges, Bonferroni-corrected), reaching 91.3% of a full-context oracle's binary-judge accuracy at 1/106th of the per-query token cost.

• Source and issues: github.com/zensation-ai/zenbrain
• Paper: arXiv:2604.23878 · Open-access archive: 10.5281/zenodo.19353663
• Try it in the browser: zensation.ai/en/playground
• Packages: @zensation/algorithms · @zensation/core · @zensation/adapter-postgres · @zensation/adapter-sqlite · @zensation/mcp · @zensation/ai-sdk

License

Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE.