nilai-vibe

nilAI’s open-source CLI coding assistant.

nilai-vibe is a command-line coding assistant powered by nilAI models. It provides a conversational interface to your codebase, allowing you to use natural language to explore, modify, and interact with your projects through a powerful set of tools.

Warning

nilai-vibe works on Windows, but we officially support and target UNIX environments.

One-line install (recommended)

Linux and macOS

curl -LsSf https://nilai.ai/vibe/install.sh | bash

Windows

First, install uv

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

Then, use the uv command below.

Using uv

uv tool install nilai-vibe

Using pip

pip install nilai-vibe

Features

• Interactive Chat: A conversational AI agent that understands your requests and breaks down complex tasks.
• Powerful Toolset: A suite of tools for file manipulation, code searching, version control, and command execution, right from the chat prompt.
  • Read, write, and patch files (read_file, write_file, search_replace).
  • Execute shell commands in a stateful terminal (bash).
  • Recursively search code with grep (with ripgrep support).
  • Manage a todo list to track the agent's work.
• Project-Aware Context: nilai-vibe automatically scans your project's file structure and Git status to provide relevant context to the agent, improving its understanding of your codebase.
• Advanced CLI Experience: Built with modern libraries for a smooth and efficient workflow.
  • Autocompletion for slash commands (/) and file paths (@).
  • Persistent command history.
  • Beautiful themes.
• Highly Configurable: Customize models, providers, tool permissions, and UI preferences through a simple config.toml file.
• Safety First: Features tool execution approval.

Quick Start

1. Navigate to your project's root directory:

   cd /path/to/your/project

2. Run nilai-vibe:

   uv run vibe

3. If this is your first time running nilai-vibe, it will:

   • Create a default configuration file at ~/.vibe/config.toml.
   • Prompt you to enter your API key if it's not already configured.
   • Save your API key to ~/.vibe/.env for future use.

4. Start interacting with the agent.

   > Can you find all instances of the word "TODO" in the project?
   
   🤖 The user wants to find all instances of "TODO". The `grep` tool is perfect for this. I will use it to search the current directory.
   
   > grep(pattern="TODO", path=".")
   
   ... (grep tool output) ...
   
   🤖 I found the following "TODO" comments in your project.
   

Usage

Interactive Mode

Run vibe to enter the interactive chat loop.

• Multi-line Input: Press Ctrl+J or Shift+Enter for select terminals to insert a newline.
• File Paths: Reference files in your prompt using the @ symbol for smart autocompletion (for example, > Read the file @src/agent.py).
• Shell Commands: Prefix any command with ! to execute it directly in your shell, bypassing the agent (for example, > !ls -l).

You can start nilai-vibe with an initial prompt using:

vibe "Refactor the main function in cli/main.py to be more modular."

The --auto-approve flag automatically approves all tool executions without prompting. In interactive mode, you can also toggle auto-approve on or off using Shift+Tab.

Programmatic Mode

You can run nilai-vibe non-interactively by piping input or using the --prompt flag, which is useful for scripting:

vibe --prompt "Refactor the main function in cli/main.py to be more modular."

By default, programmatic mode uses auto-approve.

Slash Commands

Use slash commands for meta-actions and configuration changes during a session.

Configuration

nilai-vibe is configured via a config.toml file. It looks for this file first in ./.vibe/config.toml and then falls back to ~/.vibe/config.toml.

API Key Configuration

nilai-vibe supports multiple configuration methods for your API keys. Choose the approach that best fits your workflow:

Interactive Setup (Recommended)

When you first run nilai-vibe without an API key configured, you'll be prompted to enter it interactively. The key is securely saved to ~/.vibe/.env for future use.

If you encounter URL errors during setup, manually edit the configuration:

nano ~/.vibe/config.toml

Locate and update the provider section:

[[providers]]
name = "nillion"
api_base = "your_nilai_api_base_url"  # Replace with correct URL
api_key_env_var = "NILAI_API_KEY"
api_style = "openai"
backend = "generic"

Environment Variables

Export your API credentials directly in your shell:

export NILAI_API_KEY="your_nilai_api_key"
export NILAI_API_BASE="your_nilai_api_base_url"

For persistence across sessions, add these exports to your ~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, or equivalent shell configuration file.

Configuration File

Create or edit ~/.vibe/.env with your API credentials:

NILAI_API_KEY=your_nilai_api_key
NILAI_API_BASE=your_nilai_api_base_url

This method keeps your credentials separate from your shell environment and is ideal for managing multiple configurations.

nilai-vibe automatically loads API keys from ~/.vibe/.env on startup. Environment variables take precedence over the .env file if both are set.

The .env file is specifically for API keys and other provider credentials. General nilai-vibe configuration is done in config.toml.

Custom System Prompts

You can create custom system prompts to replace the default one (prompts/cli.md). Create a markdown file in the ~/.vibe/prompts/ directory with your custom prompt content.

To use a custom system prompt, set the system_prompt_id in your configuration to match the filename (without the .md extension):

system_prompt_id = "my_custom_prompt"

This loads the prompt from ~/.vibe/prompts/my_custom_prompt.md.

Custom Agent Configurations

You can create custom agent configurations for specific use cases by adding agent-specific TOML files in the ~/.vibe/agents/ directory.

To use a custom agent, run nilai-vibe with the --agent flag:

vibe --agent my_custom_agent

nilai-vibe looks for a file named my_custom_agent.toml in the agents directory and applies its configuration.

Example custom agent configuration (~/.vibe/agents/redteam.toml):

active_model = "devstral-2"
system_prompt_id = "redteam"

disabled_tools = ["search_replace", "write_file"]

[tools.bash]
permission = "always"

[tools.read_file]
permission = "always"

This configuration assumes that you have set up a redteam prompt named ~/.vibe/prompts/redteam.md.

MCP Server Configuration

You can configure MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers to extend nilai-vibe’s capabilities. Add MCP server configurations under the mcp_servers section:

[[mcp_servers]]
name = "my_http_server"
transport = "http"
url = "http://localhost:8000"
headers = { "Authorization" = "Bearer my_token" }
api_key_env = "MY_API_KEY_ENV_VAR"
api_key_header = "Authorization"
api_key_format = "Bearer {token}"

[[mcp_servers]]
name = "my_streamable_server"
transport = "streamable-http"
url = "http://localhost:8001"
headers = { "X-API-Key" = "my_api_key" }

[[mcp_servers]]
name = "fetch_server"
transport = "stdio"
command = "uvx"
args = ["mcp-server-fetch"]

Supported transports:

• http: Standard HTTP transport.
• streamable-http: HTTP transport with streaming support.
• stdio: Standard input/output transport for local processes.

Key fields:

• name: A short alias for the server (used in tool names).
• transport: The transport type.
• url: Base URL for HTTP transports.
• headers: Additional HTTP headers.
• api_key_env: Environment variable containing the API key.
• command: Command to run for stdio transport.
• args: Additional arguments for stdio transport.

MCP tools are named using the pattern {server_name}_{tool_name} and can be configured with permissions like built-in tools:

[tools.fetch_server_get]
permission = "always"

[tools.my_http_server_query]
permission = "ask"

Enable or Disable Tools with Patterns

You can control which tools are active using enabled_tools and disabled_tools. These fields support exact names, glob patterns, and regular expressions.

Examples:

enabled_tools = ["serena_*"]
enabled_tools = ["re:^serena_.*$"]
enabled_tools = ["serena.*"]
disabled_tools = ["mcp_*", "grep"]

Notes:

• MCP tool names use underscores, for example, serena_list not serena.list.
• Regex patterns are matched against the full tool name using fullmatch.

Custom Vibe Home Directory

By default, nilai-vibe stores its configuration in ~/.vibe/. You can override this by setting the VIBE_HOME environment variable:

export VIBE_HOME="/path/to/custom/vibe/home"

This affects where nilai-vibe looks for:

• config.toml for main configuration.
• .env for API keys.
• agents/ for custom agent configurations.
• prompts/ for custom system prompts.
• tools/ for custom tools.
• logs/ for session logs.

Resources

• CHANGELOG - See what is new in each version.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See the LICENSE file for the full license text.

nilAI-vibe is directly synchronized and based on the mistralai-vibe project.

Updated/modified files on this branch:

• root files
• .github
• .vscode
• distribution
• docs
• repo-sync
• scripts
• tests
• vibe