@zensation/cli

ZenAI CLI Agent — a terminal AI assistant with filesystem tools and, optionally, ZenAI's persistent memory and knowledge graph.

zenai is a terminal agent in the spirit of Claude Code: it runs an agentic loop over Claude with a set of filesystem tools, so you can read, search, and reason over a project from the command line. When pointed at a running ZenAI backend it additionally gains persistent memory and knowledge-graph tools; without one, it runs in local-only mode.

Install

npm install -g @zensation/cli

Or run it without installing:

npx @zensation/cli "summarize the TypeScript files in this folder"

Quick start

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...      # required

# Interactive REPL
zenai

# One-shot question
zenai "what does src/index.ts do?"

Usage

zenai                     Interactive REPL mode
zenai "your question"     One-shot mode
zenai --help              Show help
zenai --version           Show version

In the REPL:

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | /status | Show backend connection, tool count, project, and session | | /clear | Clear the conversation history | | /exit (or exit) | Exit |

Configuration

All configuration is via environment variables:

| Variable | Required | Default | Description | |----------|:--------:|---------|-------------| | ANTHROPIC_API_KEY | yes | — | Claude API key | | ZENAI_MODEL | no | claude-sonnet-4-20250514 | Claude model to use | | ZENAI_MAX_TOKENS | no | 4096 | Maximum response tokens | | ZENAI_MAX_ITERATIONS | no | 25 | Maximum agent-loop iterations | | ZENAI_BACKEND_URL | no | — | ZenAI backend URL (enables memory + knowledge-graph tools) | | ZENAI_BACKEND_API_KEY | no | — | ZenAI backend API key |

Memory & knowledge graph (optional)

Set ZENAI_BACKEND_URL (and ZENAI_BACKEND_API_KEY) to connect to a running ZenAI backend. The agent then gains tools backed by ZenAI's 7-layer memory and knowledge graph, so context persists across sessions. If no backend is reachable, zenai reports local-only mode and runs with the filesystem tools alone.

Requirements

Node.js 22 or newer. Earlier versions cannot load this package: two of its dependencies ship as ES modules, and require() of an ES module only exists from Node 20.19 / 22.12 onwards. Versions up to 0.1.3 declared >=18, which was not achievable — 0.2.0 corrects the floor.

Part of ZenAI

This CLI lives in the ZenAI monorepo and builds on the same neuroscience-inspired memory system that ZenBrain publishes as standalone packages. Lab: zensation.ai · [email protected]

About ZenBrain

ZenBrain is a seven-layer, neuroscience-derived memory architecture for LLM agents, built as zero-dependency TypeScript and published under Apache-2.0. On LongMemEval-500 three of nine head-to-head answer-quality comparisons hold against Letta, Mem0 and A-Mem — all three against A-Mem, the remaining six are ties, none lost (three competitors x three LLM judges, Bonferroni-corrected, version-matched) — reaching 91.3% of a full-context oracle's binary-judge accuracy at 1/109.6 of the per-query token cost.

• Source and issues: github.com/zensation-ai/zenbrain
• Paper: arXiv:2604.23878 · Open-access archive: 10.5281/zenodo.19353663
• Try it in the browser: zensation.ai/en/playground
• Packages: @zensation/algorithms · @zensation/core · @zensation/adapter-postgres · @zensation/adapter-sqlite · @zensation/mcp · @zensation/ai-sdk

License

Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE.