AI-Zen CLI

@ai-zen/cli is an interactive AI Agent terminal, built on @ai-zen/agents-sdk and @ai-zen/agents-core. It provides a multi-turn conversational command-line interface, ships with a complete set of file-system tools, and supports MCP, Skill, sub-agent orchestration, and task migration.

What problem does it solve

When collaborating with AI in a bare terminal, you often have to manually switch back and forth between several external commands (reading/writing files, executing commands, searching, downloading, viewing/generating images…). AI-Zen CLI packages these capabilities into a set of tools that the Agent can call directly, letting the model autonomously perform file read/write, command execution, directory browsing, text search, image analysis and generation, and more—all within the conversation. Together with MCP for connecting external services, Skill for reusing reusable workflows, and task migration for seamlessly continuing a conversation when the context limit is exceeded.

Key features

• Interactive main menu: resume an unfinished draft, start a new conversation, continue a saved conversation, manage saved conversations, manage Agents, and manage configuration.
• 19 built-in tools: the file-system and image-processing toolset provided by @ai-zen/agents-sdk — see Built-in Tools.
• 5 dynamically loaded tools: load_skill, call_skill_sub_agent, load_mcp, call_mcp_tool, read_mcp_resource.
• Sub-agent orchestration: Agents with a function field can be called as tools by other Agents, with an independent permission system.
• Skill: reusable skills defined via SKILL.md, loaded contextually and delegatable to a Skill sub-agent.
• MCP support: connect MCP servers over stdio / HTTP / SSE transports, with multi-level config merging.
• Task migration: automatically generate a handoff document and start a new session when context tokens exceed the limit; you can also trigger it manually at any time with /migrate.
• Draft recovery: an abnormally exited conversation is automatically saved as a draft and can be resumed with one click on the next launch.
• Shell fallback hook: zen hook install forwards unrecognized terminal commands to the AI for processing.

Documentation navigation

• Quick Start — installation, the main menu, and conversation commands.
• Built-in Tools — the 19 built-in tools, the dynamic loading tools, and the permission model.
• MCP Support — MCP configuration, merge priority, connection, and current OAuth status.
• Skill — Skill directories, loading, and Skill sub-agent delegation.
• Task Migration — automatic/manual migration and the handoff document structure.
• Configuration — config files, directory layout, preset endpoints, and models.

License

The package @ai-zen/cli is released under the MIT license (see the license field in package.json).