agi-cli (AGI CLI) is an open-source meta-harness that runs every CLI coding agent — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor, and more — from one interface. Install it with `curl -fsSL agi-cli.sh | sh`; it lands on your PATH as `agents` (alias `ag`). One install, one config, every agent.

Yes. agi-cli is free and open source under Apache-2.0. It runs agents on your existing subscriptions, so there are no per-token API costs and no agi-cli account — nothing to sign up for.

Which coding agents does agi-cli support?

Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor, OpenCode, Grok, Kimi, Droid and more — plus any model (Kimi, MiniMax, GLM, Qwen, DeepSeek) through OpenRouter profiles. You run them individually, pin versions per project, or spawn them as parallel teams.

How is agi-cli different from Claude Code?

Claude Code is one agent. agi-cli runs and orchestrates all of them — version-pinned per project like .nvmrc, in parallel teams with boundary contracts, with skills, MCP servers, secrets, and searchable sessions shared across every agent from one config source.

How do I install agi-cli?

Run `curl -fsSL agi-cli.sh | sh`. It works on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

Comparison

agi-cli vs running agent CLIs by hand

The bare CLIs are the baseline everything else is measured against. agi-cli does not replace them — it spawns them. The question is what you maintain around them.

Muqsit Nawaz · Published July 17, 2026

What running by hand does well

Zero abstraction. The native binary, the native flags, nothing between you and the agent, and no new tool to learn. It is local-first by definition, and cron plus tmux gets you scheduling and multiplexing without installing anything.

Where agi-cli differs

agents run claude spawns the installed Claude Code binary as a local subprocess — same interface, same flags. What changes is the state around the run, which by hand is shell glue you write and maintain yourself.

agents run claude "run the full test suite"

A repo pins exact agent versions in agents.yaml, the way .nvmrc pins Node, and agents check fails CI when an installed version drifts from the pin.

agents check    # exit 1 if anything drifted, 0 when clean

Every run writes a transcript to one indexed store, searchable across Claude, Codex, Gemini, and OpenCode — not scrollback in whichever terminal the run happened in.

agents sessions "stripe webhook signature" --all

Side by side

Capability	agi-cli	CLIs by hand
Local-first — no account, no hosted control plane	yes	yes
Run multiple agents from one placeby hand: one terminal per CLI	yes	partial
Distribute runs across machines over SSHby hand: your own ssh + tmux glue	yes	partial
Cron / scheduled routinesby hand: crontab entries you maintain	yes	partial
Pin versions per project (.nvmrc-style)	yes	no
Rotate across multiple accounts to dodge rate limits	yes	no
Cross-agent session search & replay	yes	no
Parallel teams with DAG dependencies	yes	no
Keychain-backed secrets (no .env files)	yes	no

Rows are the “Run CLIs by hand” column of the homepage comparison table. Partial means achievable with your own shell glue — ssh, tmux, crontab — maintained by you.

When by hand is the right call

One agent, one machine, one account: run it by hand. A harness is overhead until there is something to harness. agi-cli earns its install when a second agent, a second account, or a second machine shows up — and the pin, the rotation, and the session store stop being things you would have to script.

FAQ

What does agi-cli change about how my agent runs?

Nothing about the agent itself. agents run claude spawns the installed Claude Code binary as a local subprocess, so the interface and the flags are the ones you already know. agi-cli adds the layer around it: pins, accounts, sessions, secrets.

Why not just write shell scripts?

You can, and cron plus tmux covers part of it — scheduling and multiplexing. What scripts do not give you is a version pin that travels with the repo, a balanced strategy that skips rate-limited accounts, or one searchable transcript store across every agent.

When is running CLIs by hand enough?

One agent, one machine, one account: run it by hand. The harness earns its install when a second agent, a second account, or a second machine shows up.

Try it

curl -fsSL agi-cli.sh/install.sh | sh

Install guide Run docs →