Coven Code

🎉 The unified Coven CLI is here. The supported way to use this engine is now the single coven CLI, which installs, pins, and manages it for you:

npm install -g @opencoven/cli

This repository is the Coven engine — coven-code v0.7.0, which coven (@opencoven/cli v0.1.1) auto-installs and checksum-verifies on first run. You no longer install coven-code from npm directly. See the release notes and the merge guide.

Coven Code is an open-source agentic coding TUI built in Rust. It is maintained by OpenCoven as a GPL-3.0 fork of Claurst by Kuber Mehta.

Attribution: Coven Code is derived from Claurst v0.7.0 under the GNU General Public License v3.0. The full license is in LICENSE.md and upstream attribution is in ATTRIBUTION.md.

What it is

Terminal coding agent with a rich ratatui TUI: chat forking, memory consolidation, diff viewer, plugin system, MCP support, session branching, and a mascot companion. No telemetry, no tracking.

Supported providers: Anthropic (Claude) and Codex (OpenAI Codex via ChatGPT/Codex login).

Status

Beta (v0.7.0). Core agent, provider routing, and TUI are stable for daily use. Experimental features are flagged below.

Recent highlights:

• /share — share sessions via unlisted GitHub Gists [EXPERIMENTAL]
• /goal — /goal <objective> keeps the agent working across multiple turns [EXPERIMENTAL]
• /coven — drive the local Coven daemon (sessions, harness runs, rituals) without leaving the TUI. /coven is the unified replacement for coven-cli's interactive menu and the legacy coven-tui slash shell; when coven-code is on PATH, coven and coven tui exec into it automatically (opt out with COVEN_LEGACY_TUI=1). Run /coven help for the subcommand list.
• Coven runtime — coven-code is a registered runtime in the coven-runtimes canonical registry, with a long-lived stream-json mode the daemon can drive (--print --input-format stream-json --output-format stream-json). /coven runtimes lists the accepted runtimes and their local install status. See docs/coven-runtimes.md.

Requirements

Getting Started

Install

npm install -g @opencoven/coven-code

Then open a new terminal and run coven-code. The coven-cave alias is also installed. (The bare coven command belongs to the Coven daemon CLI — @opencoven/cli — which execs into coven-code for the TUI.)

Upgrade

npm install -g @opencoven/coven-code@latest

Manual install

Pre-built archives are on GitHub Releases:

Each archive contains a single coven-code (or coven-code.exe) binary.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/OpenCoven/coven-code.git
cd coven-code/src-rust
cargo build --release --package claurst   # binary outputs as coven-code; coven-cave is an alias target

Internal Rust crate names (claurst-core, claurst-tui, etc.) are preserved from upstream for merge-friendliness. The compiled binary is named coven-code.

CLI Flags

Configuration

Coven Code is a local CLI tool — it runs entirely on your machine. You bring your own Anthropic API key or Codex login. Nothing is sent to OpenCoven servers; all requests go directly from your terminal to the provider.

Settings live in ~/.coven-code/settings.json. Set your Anthropic key in the environment or via /config:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=<your-key>
coven-code

Or log in via OAuth after configuring a Coven Code OAuth client:

export COVEN_CODE_ANTHROPIC_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID=<registered-client-id>
coven-code auth login

Or sign in to Codex with your ChatGPT/Codex subscription:

coven-code codex login
coven-code --provider codex

Environment variable prefix: COVEN_CODE_* (e.g. COVEN_CODE_SKIP_PROMPT_HISTORY=1).

First run & connecting in-app

If you launch coven-code with no credentials configured, the TUI opens a
provider-setup prompt. Press 1 to start the best available Claude path
(local Claude CLI import when present, otherwise API key), 2 to start Codex
browser login, or Enter to open the full connect picker. Esc skips setup;
you can connect or switch providers later with /connect.

Useful in-session commands:

List the model catalog from the shell with coven-code models [<provider>]
(--refresh to re-fetch from models.dev, --json for machine output).

Providers

See docs/providers.md for the full provider reference.

Quick example:

coven-code --provider anthropic "refactor this module"
coven-code --provider codex "explain this function"
coven-code --model claude-opus-4-7 "write tests"

Extensibility seams

Coven Code is designed to grow into the OpenCoven ecosystem. Key seams for future integration:

OpenCoven fork notes

• Internal crate names (claurst-core, claurst-tui, etc.) are intentionally preserved from upstream to keep git merge upstream/main low-friction.
• User-visible surfaces (binary, env vars, data dirs, ACP registry, docs) are fully rebranded to coven-code / COVEN_CODE_.
• To sync upstream improvements: git fetch upstream && git merge upstream/main.
• License: GPL-3.0. See LICENSE.md and ATTRIBUTION.md.

Links

• OpenCoven
• GitHub
• Issues
• Upstream (Claurst) — original project by Kuber Mehta