Boba

Run your own crew.

Run agents across terminal, web, and chat — on your machines, with your models and tools.

Boba is the operator's seat for AI agents. It coordinates and runs agents, connects them to your terminal, browser, and Telegram, works with whatever models you point it at (hosted or local), and keeps you in control of your machines, models, data, and workflow. It's sharpest today for coding work, but it isn't limited to it.

Early preview. Boba is under active development and interfaces may change between releases.

npm install -g @janole/boba
boba --help

Quickstart

1. Install (single self-contained binary, no Node/Bun required at runtime):

   npm install -g @janole/boba

2. Point it at a model. Pick a provider and set its credentials. For example, with OpenAI Codex:

   export BOTBANDIT_PROVIDER=codex
   export BOTBANDIT_CODEX_MODEL=<model>

   Other providers (Alibaba/DashScope, OpenRouter, Ollama, …) are configured the same way — see Configuration.

3. Run a one-shot prompt:

   boba run "Summarize what this repo does."

4. Or drop into the interactive terminal UI:

   boba

   • /exit or /quit to leave
   • Esc interrupts a running turn; Ctrl+C twice force-quits

Embedding the CLI

@janole/boba also exports its platform launcher for Node-based wrapper CLIs. It preserves the real terminal streams required by the interactive TUI and returns Boba's exit status.

import { runBoba } from "@janole/boba";

process.exitCode = runBoba(process.argv.slice(2));

What you get

• A terminal UI (TUI) — the primary way to drive agents interactively.
• Multiple agents & sub-agents — coordinate a crew, not just one chatbot.
• Tools with approvals — agents read/write files, run shell, and more; risky actions can require your sign-off.
• Memory, tasks, and scheduling — agents that remember, track work, and run on a timer.
• A live terminal and diff view — watch what your agents are doing.
• Telegram and a web UI — reach your agents from outside the terminal (the web UI is self-hostable and currently alpha).
• Any model, your infra — hosted or local, your data stays on your machines.

Configuration

Configuration resolves in this order:

1. Environment variables
2. botbandit.config.yaml / botbandit.config.yml in the current directory
3. Defaults

Common environment variables:

• BOTBANDIT_PROVIDER — e.g. codex, alibaba
• Codex: BOTBANDIT_CODEX_MODEL
• Alibaba/DashScope: ALIBABA_API_KEY (or DASHSCOPE_API_KEY), BOTBANDIT_ALIBABA_MODEL, optional BOTBANDIT_ALIBABA_BASE_URL
• OpenAI-compatible: provider config with baseProvider: openai-compatible, baseURL, apiKey, and models
• OpenRouter: OPENROUTER_API_KEY, with models under providers.openrouter.models in the config file

Secrets in config values support two schemes:

• plain:<value> (default)
• env:<ENV_VAR_NAME>

License

Licensed under FSL-1.1-ALv2.