Kelp Agent

Personal TUI agent built from scratch with Bun + Claude Messages API. A learning project inspired by openclaw and claude agent sdk.

Features

Core

• One-shot chat: Directly ask questions from the command line
• Persistent bash session: Execute shell commands in a long-running context
• Tool execution pipeline: Native support for Claude tool use
• Subagent delegation: Delegate focused subtasks to independent agent instances
• Interactive mode: Ask user for clarification or confirmation when needed
• Skill system: Extensible skill loading from configured directories

Tools Built-in

• bash: Execute commands in a persistent shell session
• delegate_task: Delegate subtasks to subagents with independent context
• str_replace_based_edit_tool: View, create, and edit files
• ask_user: Request user input or confirmation during execution

Skills Built-in

| Skill | Description | |-------|-------------| | image-magick | Process images using ImageMagick - resize, format conversion, crop, compression | | web-fetch | Fetch and read any URL as clean markdown | | hello-world | Demo skill that greets the user | | create-skill | Scaffold new Agent Skills, including MCP-based skills | | yt-dlp-subtitle | Download subtitles from video URLs with multi-language support | | web-search | Search the web for general topics - news, recipes, travel, product research | | github-cli | Wrapper for GitHub CLI - clone repos, view issues, create PRs, manage releases | | exa-code | Search for code examples, documentation, and programming solutions |

Tech Stack

• Powered by Bun - fast runtime, easy bundling, TypeScript support out of the box
• Uses Anthropic Claude Messages API for AI interactions
• MCP (Model Context Protocol) ready for extended tool integrations

Installation

bun install -g @vito_liu93/kelp-agent

Usage

Basic chat

kelp "what's the weather today in Shanghai?"

Pipe input

cat README.md | kelp "summarize this file"

Interactive mode (TTY)

kelp "create a new react project"

Agent will ask for confirmation before executing potentially dangerous commands.

Configuration

Environment Variables

| Variable | Description | Default | |----------|-------------|---------| | KELP_BASE_URL | Custom API endpoint | - | | KELP_API_KEY | Custom API key | - | | KELP_DEFAULT_MODEL | Default model to use | anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 |

OpenRouter Support

Kelp can use OpenRouter as an alternative API provider:

export OPENROUTER_API_KEY="your-openrouter-key"
export KELP_DEFAULT_MODEL="anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-20250514"

.env file

You can create a .env file in your project directory:

## Build from source

```bash
bun install
bun run build:bin
# Binary will be at dist/kelp

Development

bun dev "your prompt here"

License

MIT