runs anywhere. uses anything

OpenClaude is an open-source coding-agent CLI for cloud and local model providers.

Use OpenAI-compatible APIs, Gemini, GitHub Models, Codex OAuth, Codex, Ollama, Atomic Chat, and other supported backends while keeping one terminal-first workflow: prompts, tools, agents, MCP, slash commands, and streaming output.

OpenClaude is also mirrored to GitLawb: gitlawb.com/node/repos/z6MkqDnb/openclaude

Quick Start | Setup Guides | Providers | Development | VS Code Extension | Partners | Community

GitLawb	Bankr.bot	Atomic Chat	Xiaomi MiMo	Atlas Cloud
AI/ML API	Novita AI	ApiSmart	Concentrate	Exa

• One CLI across cloud APIs and local model backends — no per-provider tooling
• Guided provider setup and saved profiles with /provider
• Coding-agent workflows in one place: bash, file tools, grep, glob, agents, tasks, MCP, and web tools
• A bundled VS Code extension for launch integration and theme support
• A pixel-art hero companion who fires an arrow every time you press Enter (really — see Meet your buddy)

OpenClaude requires Node.js >=22.0.0 for npm installs and runtime. Bun is only needed for source builds and local development.

npm install -g @gitlawb/openclaude@latest

If you're on Arch Linux, you can install OpenClaude from the community-maintained AUR package:

paru -S openclaude

If the install later reports ripgrep not found, install ripgrep system-wide and confirm rg --version works in the same terminal before starting OpenClaude.

Verify / troubleshoot installed version:

openclaude --version
npm view @gitlawb/openclaude dist-tags
npm install -g @gitlawb/openclaude@latest

openclaude

Inside OpenClaude:

• run /provider for guided provider setup and saved profiles
• run /onboard-github for GitHub Models onboarding

Note: OpenClaude does not automatically load project .env files. We recommend using the /provider command for setup, which saves provider profiles and credentials in .openclaude-profile.json. If you prefer environment variables, export them explicitly or run openclaude --provider-env-file .env for provider/setup variables. Export runtime/debug knobs from your shell or launcher.

Resume an existing conversation by session ID, or continue the most recent conversation in the current directory:

openclaude --resume <session-id>
openclaude --continue

Add --fork-session to branch the conversation history into a new session ID instead of reusing the original transcript:

openclaude --resume <session-id> --fork-session
openclaude --continue --fork-session

Forking is conversation branching only. It does not create filesystem isolation, copy your working tree, or create a git worktree branch.

Run long non-interactive prompts detached from the current terminal:

openclaude --bg "fix failing tests"
openclaude --bg --name auth-refactor "refactor auth middleware"
openclaude ps
openclaude logs auth-refactor
openclaude logs auth-refactor -f
openclaude kill auth-refactor

Background sessions are local child processes. OpenClaude does not start a daemon or network service, and permission/provider/model/settings flags are passed to the child process the same way they are for a foreground --print run. Session metadata and logs are stored under the resolved OpenClaude config directory, usually ~/.openclaude/bg-sessions/; OPENCLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR can point OpenClaude somewhere else. CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR is ignored for OpenClaude background-session storage. Session names can be reused after older sessions reach a terminal state; use the session ID to inspect older logs with the same name. A naturally finished session is recorded as exited when its process returns zero and failed when it returns nonzero or handles a termination signal. stale remains the conservative result when the process disappears without an observed outcome; an explicit successful openclaude kill is recorded as killed, and killed takes precedence over a natural exited or failed outcome for the same process. Terminal outcomes are stored separately under bg-sessions/terminal/; deleting that directory makes finished sessions fall back to liveness-derived status. OpenClaude does not infer POSIX signal names on Windows. Unobservable force termination, host crashes, and power loss remain stale on every platform.

openclaude attach <id-or-name> currently reports the matching session and points to openclaude logs <id> -f; full terminal reattach is not implemented for local background sessions yet.

OpenClaude stores its own config under ~/.openclaude and ~/.openclaude.json by default. It does not read ~/.claude, project .claude/ directories, or CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR; new users can start with an empty OpenClaude config and do not need Claude Code installed.

If you previously used OpenClaude with .claude paths, migrate intentionally: copy only the settings, commands, agents, skills, scheduled tasks, or other files you personally created for OpenClaude into the matching .openclaude location. Do not blanket-copy .claude, and do not copy Claude Code credentials or auth files. For provider authentication, prefer running OpenClaude's provider setup again or exporting provider-specific environment variables.

macOS / Linux:

export CLAUDE_CODE_USE_OPENAI=1
export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-your-key-here
export OPENAI_MODEL=gpt-4o

openclaude

Windows PowerShell:

$env:CLAUDE_CODE_USE_OPENAI="1"
$env:OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-your-key-here"
$env:OPENAI_MODEL="gpt-4o"

openclaude

macOS / Linux:

export CLAUDE_CODE_USE_OPENAI=1
export OPENAI_BASE_URL=http://localhost:11434/v1
export OPENAI_MODEL=qwen2.5-coder:7b

openclaude

Windows PowerShell:

$env:CLAUDE_CODE_USE_OPENAI="1"
$env:OPENAI_BASE_URL="http://localhost:11434/v1"
$env:OPENAI_MODEL="qwen2.5-coder:7b"

openclaude

For Ollama, OpenClaude uses Ollama's native chat API and requests a 32768-token context window on each chat request so same-session history is not silently truncated by Ollama's OpenAI-compatible shim. Set OPENCLAUDE_OLLAMA_NUM_CTX or OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH if you need a different request-level context size. See Advanced Setup for verification with ollama ps.

Beginner-friendly guides:

• Non-Technical Setup
• Windows Quick Start
• macOS / Linux Quick Start

Advanced and source-build guides:

• Advanced Setup
• Smart Auto-Routing
• Agent Routing and Step Limits
• Headless gRPC Server
• Repo Map (codebase intelligence)
• Android Install

• Tool-driven coding workflows: Bash, file read/write/edit, grep, glob, agents, tasks, MCP, and slash commands
• Streaming responses: Real-time token output and tool progress
• Tool calling: Multi-step tool loops with model calls, tool execution, and follow-up responses
• Images: URL and base64 image inputs for providers that support vision
• Provider profiles: Guided setup plus saved user-level provider profile support
• Local and remote model backends: Cloud APIs, local servers, and Apple Silicon local inference
• Codebase intelligence (repo map): Structural map of the repository ranked by PageRank importance, auto-injected into context when the REPO_MAP flag is enabled or the REPO_MAP environment variable is set. Inspect with /repomap (2048-token default). See docs/repo-map.md for details.
• A companion with signature moves: A truecolor pixel-art hero who lives beside your prompt and reacts when you work. See below.

Run /buddy to hatch a companion — a truecolor pixel-art hero who stands beside your prompt, idles, blinks, and fires their signature move every time you submit a message:

/buddy                  hatch (first run) or pet your companion
/buddy set robinhood    the green archer — arrow shot on every Enter
/buddy set kaio         gold-haired warrior — charges a full-width energy wave
/buddy set strawhat     stretchy punch that snaps back
/buddy set merlin       twinkling sparkle stream
/buddy set kage         spinning shuriken
/buddy set ember        dragon fire with a real heat gradient
/buddy set corsair      cannonball with smoke trail
/buddy name Robin       rename your companion
/buddy set random       back to your rolled hero

Companions respect prefersReducedMotion, degrade gracefully to line art in low-color terminals, and can be silenced with /buddy mute. Requires a terminal at least 100 columns wide for the full sprite.

OpenClaude supports multiple providers, but behavior is not identical across all of them.

• Anthropic-specific features may not exist on other providers
• Tool quality depends heavily on the selected model
• Smaller local models can struggle with long multi-step tool flows
• Some providers impose lower output caps than the CLI defaults, and OpenClaude adapts where possible
• AI/ML API uses the OpenAI-compatible route, defaults to gpt-4o, and only surfaces chat-capable models from its public catalog
• Gitlawb Opengateway is the fresh-install startup default and requires an API key from https://gitlawb.com/opengateway/keys. It uses one OpenAI-compatible base URL; switch between mimo-* and google/gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview with /model, and do not pin the base URL to /v1/xiaomi-mimo.
• Z.AI GLM Coding Plan uses https://api.z.ai/api/coding/paas/v4 with glm-5.2 by default. GLM-5.3 is selectable as glm-5.3; use glm-5.3?reasoning=low, glm-5.3?reasoning=high, or glm-5.3?reasoning=xhigh to request its documented low, high, or maximum effort. The existing GLM-5.2 query controls remain supported.
• Xiaomi MiMo uses api-key header auth on the direct OpenAI-compatible route and currently does not support /usage reporting in OpenClaude
• GitHub Copilot serializes sub-agent execution by default to reduce Premium Request consumption — see Agent Routing and Step Limits for tuning

For best results, use models with strong tool/function calling support.

Route different agents to different models (cost optimization, splitting work by model strength), cap sub-agent tool steps with maxSteps, and tune GitHub Copilot sub-agent behavior. Configured via settings, agent frontmatter, and environment variables:

• per-agent provider/model overrides via agentModels + agentRouting in ~/.openclaude/settings.json
• model-only routes that reuse your current provider's credentials
• built-in agents (Explore and Plan [feature-gated], verification [feature-gated: requires VERIFICATION_AGENT + tengu_hive_evidence], code-reviewer [requires diff inline]) routable by type name

See Agent Routing and Step Limits for the full guide.

By default, WebSearch works on non-Anthropic models using DuckDuckGo. This gives GPT-4o, DeepSeek, Gemini, Ollama, and other OpenAI-compatible providers a free web search path out of the box.

Note: DuckDuckGo fallback works by scraping search results and may be rate-limited, blocked, or subject to DuckDuckGo's Terms of Service. If you want a more reliable supported option, configure Firecrawl.

For Anthropic-native backends and Codex responses, OpenClaude keeps the native provider web search behavior.

WebFetch works, but its basic HTTP plus HTML-to-markdown path can still fail on JavaScript-rendered sites or sites that block plain HTTP requests.

Set a Firecrawl API key if you want Firecrawl-powered search/fetch behavior:

export FIRECRAWL_API_KEY=your-key-here

With Firecrawl enabled:

• WebSearch can use Firecrawl's search API while DuckDuckGo remains the default free path for non-Claude models
• WebFetch uses Firecrawl's scrape endpoint instead of raw HTTP, handling JS-rendered pages correctly

Free tier at firecrawl.dev includes 500 credits. The key is optional.

OpenClaude can run as a headless gRPC service with bidirectional streaming — integrate its agentic capabilities into other applications, CI/CD pipelines, or custom UIs. Start it with npm run dev:grpc; a test CLI client ships with the repo. See Headless gRPC Server for configuration and client generation from src/proto/openclaude.proto.

Use Node.js >=22.0.0 and Bun 1.3.13 or newer for source builds.

bun install
bun run build
node dist/cli.mjs

Day-to-day commands:

• bun run dev — build and launch from source
• bun test — full unit suite (Bun's built-in runner)
• bun test path/to/file.test.ts — focused runs for the areas you touch
• bun run test:coverage — coverage to coverage/lcov.info plus a visual report at coverage/index.html (bun run test:coverage:ui rebuilds just the UI)
• bun run smoke — smoke checks
• bun run doctor:runtime, bun run verify:privacy; for PR intent scanning, use the fresh-upstream, explicit-ref workflow in the local pre-push validation contract

Focused suites: bun run test:provider, bun run test:provider-recommendation.

To benchmark the launcher module compile cache, build the CLI and run:

bun run build
bun run benchmark:startup

The benchmark requires Node >=22.8.0, where the compile-cache API was added; the built OpenClaude launcher continues to support the declared Node >=22.0.0 runtime range.

The benchmark defaults to 30 separate-process warm runs and 10 isolated empty-cache runs. It reports the median, IQR, MAD, first cache-populating run, first warm-up, Node/OS/CPU details, bundle size, and commit. Direct bundle timings are included only as a secondary diagnostic; the full launcher result is the decision signal. Use bun run benchmark:startup -- --warm-runs 40 --cold-runs 10 to request a larger sample set. The benchmark records results without enforcing a timing threshold in CI.

OpenClaude leaves Node's standard compile-cache controls authoritative. Set NODE_DISABLE_COMPILE_CACHE=1 to disable the optimization, including for V8 coverage runs that require uncached compilation.

Before opening or updating a PR, run the authoritative local pre-push validation contract. The commands below are useful for narrow iteration, but they do not replace that required preflight:

• bun run build
• bun run smoke
• bun run test:coverage when your change affects shared runtime or provider logic
• focused bun test ... runs for the files and flows you changed

• src/ - core CLI/runtime
• scripts/ - build, verification, and maintenance scripts
• docs/ - setup, contributor, and project documentation
• vscode-extension/openclaude-vscode/ - VS Code extension
• .github/ - repo automation, templates, and CI configuration
• bin/ - CLI launcher entrypoints

The repo includes a VS Code extension in vscode-extension/openclaude-vscode for OpenClaude launch integration, provider-aware Control Center, in-editor chat, theme support, and optional Microsoft Foundry / Azure OpenAI configuration (endpoint, API version, deployment, API key via Secret Storage) injected into launched terminals. See that folder's README.

If you believe you found a security issue, see SECURITY.md.

• Use GitHub Discussions for Q&A, ideas, and community conversation
• Use GitHub Issues for confirmed bugs and actionable feature work
• Join the Discord to chat with the community in real time
• Follow @gitlawb on X for updates and announcements

Contributions are welcome. For larger changes, open an issue first so the scope is clear before implementation. See Development for the build, test, and pre-PR validation commands.

OpenClaude is an independent community project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Anthropic.

OpenClaude originated from the Claude Code codebase and has since been substantially modified to support multiple providers and open use. "Claude" and "Claude Code" are trademarks of Anthropic PBC. See LICENSE for details.

MIT for OpenClaude contributors' modifications; the derived Claude Code remains Anthropic's. See more.