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Kimi Code CLI

Moonshot's official terminal coding agent — MIT-licensed, TypeScript, built for the Kimi model family.

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About

Kimi Code CLI is Moonshot AI's official agentic coding assistant for the terminal, released in mid-2026 as the successor to the earlier kimi-cli (it migrates your old config and sessions). It reads and edits code, runs shell commands, searches files, fetches web pages, and works through multi-step tasks, with coder, explore, and plan subagents running in isolated contexts.

Installation is a single shell script with no Node.js required, auth is /login via Kimi Code OAuth or a Moonshot platform API key, and it works out of the box with Kimi models while also accepting other OpenAI-compatible providers. MCP servers are configured conversationally rather than through raw JSON. The repo is MIT-licensed, has gathered 7,900 stars quickly, and was pushed as recently as yesterday — one of the more actively developed open terminal agents right now.

What it can do

  • Agentic terminal coding: read, edit, shell, search, web fetch with feedback-driven planning
  • `coder`, `explore`, and `plan` subagents in isolated contexts
  • MCP servers configured conversationally
  • One-shot non-interactive mode (`kimi -p "..."`) for scripts
  • Works with Kimi models out of the box plus other OpenAI-compatible providers
  • MIT-licensed and self-contained (no Node.js required)

Setup

  1. Install with curl -fsSL https://code.kimi.com/kimi-code/install.sh | bash (macOS/Linux) or the PowerShell script on Windows.
  2. Run kimi in your project directory.
  3. On first launch, run /login and choose Kimi Code OAuth or a Moonshot API key.
  4. Describe your task; use / slash commands and subagents for exploration, planning, and implementation.

Prerequisites

macOS, Linux, or Windows (Git for Windows needed on Windows); a Moonshot account or API key, or another OpenAI-compatible provider.

Use cases

coding-agentsterminaldeveloper-toolsopen-source

Works with

Trust score — 8/10

/10 trustMetrics-checked

Scored 8/10 (metrics tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: 7,879 GitHub stars (GitHub API), MIT license, official Moonshot AI repo, pushed Oct 15 2026, independent launch coverage corroborating the feature set. Strengths: first-party tool from a frontier lab, genuinely open, fast-moving. Docked for: (1) young project — long-term maintenance unproven; (2) default path ties you to Moonshot's models and auth, with BYO-provider as the escape hatch. License: MIT.

★ 7,879 GitHub stars

How the trust score is built

Full methodology →
Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
7.0/10
Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
9.0/10
Openness · license + docs
10.0/10
Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
8.0/10
  • · 7,879 GitHub stars (log-scaled vs catalog peers, verified via GitHub API)
  • · last push Oct 15 2026; MIT-licensed; official Moonshot AI repo; succeeds kimi-cli with config/session migration
  • · Terminal coding agent (coder/explore/plan subagents, MCP, one-shot mode) — feature set corroborated by independent launch coverage
  • · manual review: young project, long-term maintenance unproven; default path ties to Moonshot models/auth with BYO-provider escape hatch

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.