Ethos

The TypeScript AI agent framework where personality is architecture.

Each personality is a structural component, not a prompt: a curated toolset, a first-person identity, and a memory scope. Specialists ship by default — researcher, engineer, reviewer, coach, operator. Bring your own.

Install

One-liner (recommended)

curl -fsSL https://ethosagent.ai/install.sh | bash

Detects platform, installs Node 24 if missing, then runs npm install -g @ethosagent/cli. macOS and Linux only.

npm

npm install -g @ethosagent/cli

Requires Node 24+.

Lean install (CLI mode only, no platform adapters)

The default install pulls in optional SDKs for the channel adapters (Telegram, Slack, Discord, email) and the playwright browser used by vision_analyze. If you only want the CLI / REPL surface, skip them:

npm install -g @ethosagent/cli --omit=optional

Roughly 2× faster install and a fraction of the package count. You can install the specific adapter later when you wire it up — e.g. npm install -g @slack/bolt once you decide to connect Slack. ethos doctor reports which platform SDKs are present.

Known install warning

You may see a npm warn deprecated [email protected] line during install. This comes from better-sqlite3's native-module build chain (and, on the default install, sharp via the optional ML toolkit) — both upstream libraries still rely on it. prebuild-install is deprecated but functional; install succeeds and Ethos works normally. Using --omit=optional removes the sharp half of the warning; removing the better-sqlite3 half requires upstream changes we don't control. Tracked upstream; no action needed on your side.

From source

git clone https://github.com/ethosagent/ethos.git
cd ethos
pnpm install
pnpm dev    # tsx apps/ethos/src/index.ts

Quick start

ethos setup    # one-time wizard: pick provider + key + personality
ethos chat     # start the REPL
ethos cron list
ethos personality list

See ethosagent.ai for full docs, tutorials, and the plugin SDK.

What's in this package

This is the ethos CLI binary. The other public packages plugin authors use:

• @ethosagent/types — interface contracts (zero deps)
• @ethosagent/core — AgentLoop, registries, defaults
• @ethosagent/plugin-sdk — tool, hook, memory, and adapter helpers + testing utilities
• @ethosagent/plugin-contract — marketplace validation schema

License

MIT — see LICENSE.