Terminal 1

+++ disableToc = false title = "Terminal agent" weight = 24 url = '/features/terminal-agent' +++

{{< agentic-routing current="terminal-agent" >}}

local-ai chat opens a terminal agent that runs against your LocalAI server. It is not a separate tool: the agent is compiled into the local-ai binary, so if you have LocalAI you already have it.

It works in the shell you already have open. It reads your files, runs commands on your machine, delegates to sub-agents, and loads MCP servers, plugins and skills. Read-only work happens on its own; anything that can change something asks you first.

The agent is nib embedded in LocalAI, which is why its plugin, skill and MCP ecosystem works here unchanged.

{{% notice warning %}} Breaking change. local-ai chat used to be a plain chat prompt. It is now an agent that executes shell commands on the machine it runs on, behind an approval gate you answer. The old /clear command is gone, and /compact is the nearest equivalent. {{% /notice %}}

Start a session

# Terminal 1
local-ai run

# Terminal 2
local-ai chat

That opens the full-screen interface. Pass --cli for a plain, pipe-friendly session instead.

If nothing is listening, an interactive session offers to start a server for you and stops it again when you exit. Anywhere else, for instance in a script, it fails and points you at local-ai run.

How the model is chosen

The agent picks the model in this order, and stops at the first one that answers:

1. --model, if you passed it.
2. The model saved in the agent's config.
3. The only model the server offers, when there is exactly one.
4. An interactive picker, when there are several and you are at a terminal. Your choice is saved, so the question is asked once.
5. Otherwise it fails, listing the models the server does offer.

Summon it with Ctrl+Space

local-ai chat --init prints a shell widget that binds Ctrl+Space to the agent, so you can call it from a half-typed command line without losing what you were doing:

# zsh
echo 'eval "$(local-ai chat --init zsh)"' >> ~/.zshrc
# bash
echo 'eval "$(local-ai chat --init bash)"' >> ~/.bashrc
# fish
echo 'local-ai chat --init fish | source' >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish

Inside a session

• /models lists the models the server offers, marking the one you are using.
• /model <name> switches model and keeps the conversation you are in.
• /compact summarises the history so far to free up context.

Tool approval

Read-only tools run without asking. That covers reads and searches, and read-only shell commands such as ls and cat, so the agent can look around and answer you without interrupting. Everything else prompts for approval, and you can approve, deny, or trust the tool for the rest of the session.

nib's README keeps the exact list of what counts as read-only, along with the approval modes you can set in the agent's own config.

--yolo, or LOCALAI_CHAT_YOLO=1, approves every tool call without asking. It is the right setting for a sandbox and the wrong one for your laptop.

Piping and scripting

--cli makes the agent answer a piped question and exit:

echo "what is 2+2" | local-ai chat --cli

That exits 0. Read-only tools still run, so a piped question can inspect a repository or a log file to answer you.

A tool call that is not read-only is a different matter: there is nobody at the keyboard to approve it, so the call is denied and the session exits 3. The code is deliberately not 1, so a script can tell "I refused to act" apart from "I crashed".

Pipe a question in without --cli and the agent refuses, with a message naming --cli. It will not render a full-screen interface into a pipe that cannot show it.

Redirecting the output is not the same thing and is not refused: local-ai chat > out.txt from a terminal draws the interface on /dev/tty and writes only the command you pick with Ctrl+Y to the file. That is the same capture the Ctrl+Space widget is built on, so both work. It is the stdin that has to be a terminal.

Where the agent keeps its state

Config, plugins and skills live in ~/.config/localai/chat/, or under $XDG_CONFIG_HOME when you have set it. Override it with --config-dir, or with LOCALAI_CHAT_CONFIG_DIR. The directory is user-scoped rather than server-scoped, because the agent is a client and may be pointed at a remote LocalAI.

Plugins, skills and MCP servers

The agent's own management commands are reached by passing them through:

local-ai chat plugin install https://github.com/user/plugin
local-ai chat skill list
local-ai chat mcp add my-server -- npx -y @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem /tmp

Everything after the first positional argument is forwarded verbatim, so LocalAI's own flags have to come first:

local-ai chat --config-dir /srv/agent plugin list

Claude Code plugins install as they are, so a plugin written for that format needs no conversion.

{{% notice warning %}} Pass --yes in scripts. The management commands do not read the streams LocalAI hands them, so plugin install without --yes in a non-interactive context installs the plugin and leaves it disabled. It prints that it did, on the line Plugin "name" installed but left disabled, but it exits 0 either way, so a script that only checks the exit code cannot tell the two outcomes apart. Always pass --yes when you are not at a terminal. {{% /notice %}}

Flags

Every flag, with its environment variable, is in [Chat flags]({{% relref "reference/cli-reference" %}}#chat-flags).