@tjcoder/cli

@tjcoder/cli

Terminal-first AI coding assistant by TJ Coder / AI Labs.

coder is a Go TUI that pairs a conversational AI agent with real developer tools, streams the model's reasoning live in a "cognition" pane, and ships 7 specialized agents plus 31 tools. It defaults to local Ollama models (your code never leaves your machine) and optionally uses Google Gemini. This package is the npm distribution: it downloads the right prebuilt binary for your platform on npm install, so you don't need a Go toolchain.

Install

npm install -g @tjcoder/cli

That's it. After install, coder is on your PATH:

coder --version

Prerequisites

coder itself is a self-contained Go binary — the only requirement is node >= 18 (to run the postinstall downloader). To actually use the TUI you'll also need:

• An Ollama server running locally (default: http://localhost:11434)
• At least one model pulled (ollama pull gemma4:cloud or similar)

Don't have Ollama yet? The shell installer can set it up in one go:

INSTALL_OLLAMA=1 curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tjcoder-labs/cli/main/install.sh | bash

Features

• Live cognition pane — watch the model reason in real time
• 7 specialized agents — software engineer, terminal specialist, code reviewer, Android assistant, cloud expert, social researcher, storyteller
• 31 tools — filesystem, shell, Git, browser automation (CDP), Cloudflare DNS, email, and more
• Multi-line paste — paste code blocks or documents; they're kept as one message
• Headless mode — script it with coder -p "…" for CI and automation
• Session persistence — conversation history, tasks, and memories survive across runs
• Local-first privacy — defaults to Ollama; your code never leaves your machine

Updating

npm update -g @tjcoder/cli

The postinstall hook is idempotent and won't redownload a binary that's already present.

Uninstalling

npm uninstall -g @tjcoder/cli

The preuninstall hook removes the cached binary.

Usage

coder                              # launch the TUI
coder --version                    # print version and exit
coder --provider ollama --host http://localhost:11434
coder --provider gemini --gemini-api-key $GEMINI_API_KEY
coder --provider gemini models     # list available Gemini models
coder --workspace-root ~/code/foo
coder --model gemma4:cloud
coder --timeout 30m

Environment variables

Var	Default	Purpose
GEMINI_API_KEY	(required for gemini)	API key for Google's Gemini API
CODER_HTTP_TIMEOUT	5m	HTTP client timeout (time.ParseDuration)
CODER_CLI_REPO	tjcoder-labs/cli	Override the GitHub repo used by postinstall
CODER_CLI_VERSION	(matches this package)	Pin a specific coder binary version
CODER_CLI_REQUIRE_DOWNLOAD	(unset)	Set to 1 to make a failed download fatal

Pinning a version

# install a specific coder version regardless of the @tjcoder/cli wrapper version
CODER_CLI_VERSION=v0.9.166 npm install -g @tjcoder/cli

Troubleshooting

coder: native binary not found at .../lib/coder

The postinstall hook was skipped. Re-run with scripts enabled:

npm rebuild @tjcoder/cli
# or
npm install -g @tjcoder/cli --foreground-scripts

coder: download failed: 404 ...

There is no published release for your platform/arch, or the version you pinned doesn't exist. Try a different version, or fall back to the Go-based installer:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tjcoder-labs/cli/main/install.sh | bash

License

MIT — see the LICENSE file. Built by TJ Coder / AI Labs.