Codewhale Open source

What it does

Codewhale is an open-source terminal coding agent, written in Rust, that reads your project, edits files, runs commands, and checks its work using either a hosted model provider or a local model you choose. It positions itself as a fully open alternative to closed CLI coding agents, with the model backend left up to you rather than tied to one vendor.

What is inside

• Approval modes and review mechanisms so you control what the agent is allowed to do before it acts
• Session persistence, so you can save sessions and set durable goals it keeps working toward
• Multi-agent coordination for running more than one agent against a project
• MCP server integration and configurable skills for extending what the agent can do
• A Computer Use plugin for observing and interacting with other applications
• Multiple clients: a terminal TUI, a local web interface, and a VS Code extension

Works with

Connects to hosted LLM providers as well as local inference via Ollama, vLLM, or SGLang, so it is not locked to a single model vendor.

How to install or connect

Documented install paths include a curl-pipe script for macOS/Linux, direct installers for Windows, and packages via npm, Cargo, Docker, and Nix, pointing to codewhale.net for the primary installer.

Maintenance and safety

MIT licensed, with third-party license notices documented. The project shows genuine, organic-looking activity: 41k+ stars, 3.6k forks, over 10,000 commits, 114 open issues and active pull requests, plus clear contribution guidelines. Because it runs commands and edits files locally, use its approval/review modes rather than full-auto mode until you trust it on a given codebase, as with any file-editing agent.

Who should use it

Developers who want a vendor-neutral terminal coding agent that can run against either paid hosted models or fully local/offline models, and who want an editor extension and web UI alongside the CLI.