Xal (Zal)

Important

Xal is currently in beta. Only beta releases are available, and breaking changes may occur before the first stable release.

A terminal coding harness with a headless agent core where every capability, is a plugin

Powered by OpenTUI

Install the beta

Install the latest beta release on macOS, Linux, or Windows from a POSIX shell:

curl -fsSL https://xal.sh/install | sh -s -- --beta

The installer supports x64 and arm64, including glibc and musl Linux. On Windows, run it from Git Bash, MSYS2, or Cygwin. It installs to ~/.local/bin by default.

Run Xal from any project:

xal

Start the TUI in plan, normal, or yolo mode:

xal --mode plan

Set "mode": "plan" in config.json to use it by default. Command-line --mode takes precedence.

Update to the latest beta release:

xal update

There is no stable installation channel during the beta rollout. See the installation and beta release guide for custom paths, supported platforms, and the release process.

Documentation

The documentation covers configuration, the TUI, permissions, providers, integrations, plugins, reusable instructions, commands and skills, goals, and background work. Developer resources include the public product API, OpenAPI specification, CLI automation, and MCP guidance. The Markdown sources live in docs.

Run with Profiler

Run with --profile to store anonymous session diagnostics and print the profile path when the app exits.

Development

Local development requires Bun 1.3.14 and Rust 1.92.0. The first development or test run builds the native addon for the host and caches it under apps/cli/.native. Restart bun dev after changing Rust code.

bun install
bun dev

License

Xal is available under the MIT License.