Codewhale

An open source coding agent for your terminal — bring your own model.

Codewhale started as a native experience for DeepSeek. It has since grown into a
community-driven project: one coding harness that fits a growing international
community and supports as many models and providers as possible — open models
first, hosted or local, none privileged over the rest.

Give it a provider, a model, and a task. It reads your code, edits files, runs
commands, and checks its own work, then stops when the job is done or it needs
you. Switch models mid-task with /model. Work interactively in the TUI, or run
codewhale exec in scripts and CI. It's written in Rust, licensed MIT, and runs
on your machine.

The part that isn't like other harnesses: you pick the model for each role,
and they don't have to match. A fleet pins a provider, a model, and a
reasoning tier per role — so a cheap fast model can direct an expensive
reasoning one, or a GLM builder can work the same job as a Kimi reviewer.
Write your own roles, your own constitution, and the harness is yours rather
than ours.

We're always looking for contributors and ways to improve. If a model or
provider you use is missing, or something breaks, telling us is one of the most
useful things you can do — see Contributing.

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!Codewhale running in a terminal

Install Copy Chapter

npm install -g codewhale

Cargo, Docker, Nix, Scoop, prebuilt archives, Android/Termux, and a CNB mirror
for anyone who can't reach GitHub are covered in
docs/INSTALL.md. Coming from deepseek-tui? Your config and
sessions carry over — see docs/REBRAND.md.

Use Copy Chapter

codewhale auth set --provider deepseek   # or export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, etc.
codewhale                                # open the TUI
codewhale exec "fix the failing test"    # headless
codewhale web                            # local browser client on 127.0.0.1

In the TUI: /model switches provider and model together, /fleet builds and
runs the team — one role at a time, each with its own model — /undo reverts
the last turn, and /restore <N> rolls the workspace back to an earlier
snapshot (bare /restore lists them). Tab
cycles Plan / Work / Operate when the composer is empty — with text in it, Tab
completes slash commands and @ mentions instead. Shift+Tab cycles the
Ask / Auto-Review / Full Access permission posture at any time. ! runs a
shell command through the normal approval path.

What it does Copy Chapter

- Any model, any provider — and any mix of them. DeepSeek, Claude, GPT,
Kimi, GLM, and 30+ providers, plus your own vLLM, SGLang, or Ollama with no
key, all through one runtime and one toolset. The catalog tracks each
provider's live lineup — DeepSeek's V4 Pro backend (labeled
DeepSeek-V4-Pro-0813) stays callable as deepseek-v4-pro, Grok 4.6 is the
direct xAI default, and OrcaRouter routes through orcarouter/auto. A saved
role records its provider, model, and reasoning tier explicitly, so a
fleet can span vendors in a single run and a role's route never depends on
whichever provider happens to be active. Context limits and prices come from
the real route, and an unknown price shows as unknown rather than $0.
- A harness you author. Roles are files you can read and edit — a model, a
tool posture, and standing instructions per role — kept in the project so the
team shares them, or beside your other personal settings so they follow you
between repos. A constitution records how you want the agent to behave across
every session, so the harness matches your practice instead of ours.
- Read-only until you allow more. Plan mode can't change files, and
approvals gate risky commands. When an OS sandbox actually wraps a command,
Codewhale says so: Seatbelt on macOS where available, opt-in bubblewrap on
Linux. A repo's constitution.json compiles into write holds that even Full
Access can't skip.
- Work you can resume. A fleet records every step to an append-only ledger,
so fleet resume picks up where you left off.

Learn more Copy Chapter

- docs/PROVIDERS.md — every provider route: hosted,
gateway, and local
- docs/FLEET.md — fleets, the ledger, and resume
- docs/WORKFLOW_EXPERIMENTAL_SEARCH.md — frozen, provider-neutral experimental search within Workflow
- docs/CONFIGURATION.md — config.toml, hooks, and
the constitution
- docs/AUTHORIZATION_ORDER.md — how modes,
hooks, permission rules, safety floors, repo law, approvals, and sandboxing
compose
- docs/HOOKS.md — the eleven TUI lifecycle hook events, their
payloads, and which three of them can steer a turn (codewhale exec and the
CLI subcommands do not fire hooks)
- docs/WEB.md — the loopback-only browser client and its one-time
authentication boundary

Everything else — modes, keybindings, sandbox details, MCP, the runtime API,
and architecture — lives in docs and on
codewhale.net.

Contributing Copy Chapter

Issues, PRs, repro steps, logs, and feature requests are all real project work,
and first contributions are welcome. When a PR can't merge as-is, maintainers
harvest what works and keep the author credited — in the commit, the changelog,
and docs/CONTRIBUTORS.md.

- Open issues — good first
contributions live here
- CONTRIBUTING.md — dev setup and PR flow
- docs/CONTRIBUTORS.md — everyone who has shaped this
- Buy me a coffee

Thanks to DeepSeek for the models and support
that started the project, DataWhale 🐋 for
welcoming us into the Whale Brother family, and
OpenWarp and
Open Design for collaborating on the
terminal-agent experience.

License Copy Chapter

MIT. An independent community project, not affiliated with any model
provider.