Zen Code — AI Coding Agent for Your Terminal

An open-source AI coding agent that lives in your terminal. Powered by the Zen Coder model family from Zen LM.

Why Zen Code?

• Codebase understanding: Ask questions about large, unfamiliar repos
• Multi-file edits: Refactor across files with a single prompt
• Test execution: Run tests and iterate on failures automatically
• Git integration: Commit, diff, and review changes in-flow
• MCP tools: 260+ tools via Model Context Protocol
• Intelligent routing: Automatically selects from Zen Coder 4B–480B based on task complexity

Installation

npm install -g @zen/code

Or with Homebrew:

brew install zen-code

Quick Start

# Launch interactive session
zen-code

# Run a single task (headless)
zen-code "add tests for the auth module"

# Reference specific files
zen-code "refactor @src/api/handler.ts to use async/await"

Usage

Interactive mode

cd your-project/
zen-code

Type prompts directly. Use @filename to reference files in context.

Headless mode (scripts, CI)

zen-code -p "fix the failing tests in src/"

IDE integration

Zen Code integrates with VS Code, Zed, and JetBrains IDEs. See zenlm.org for setup guides.

Configuration

Create ~/.zen/settings.json:

{
  "modelProviders": {
    "openai": [
      {
        "id": "zenlm/zen-coder",
        "name": "Zen Coder",
        "baseUrl": "http://localhost:8000/v1",
        "envKey": "ZEN_API_KEY"
      }
    ]
  },
  "model": {
    "name": "zenlm/zen-coder"
  }
}

Models

Zen Code uses the Zen Coder family with intelligent routing:

Model	Parameters	Context	Best For
Zen Coder 4B	4B	32K	Fast edits, edge deployment
Zen Coder Flash	31B MoE	131K	Balanced performance
Zen Coder 480B	480B MoE	128K	Complex refactors, frontier tasks

Deploy with vLLM:

vllm serve zenlm/zen-coder --port 8000

Session Commands

• /help — list commands
• /clear — clear conversation history
• /compress — compress history to save tokens
• /stats — show session info
• /exit — quit

Links

• Website: https://zenlm.org
• Models: https://huggingface.co/zenlm
• GitHub: https://github.com/zenlm
• Hanzo MCP: https://github.com/hanzoai/mcp

License

Apache 2.0

---

Zen AI: Clarity Through Intelligence