clankie — Personal AI Assistant

A minimal AI assistant built on pi's SDK. clankie runs on your machine with your credentials, with a web channel today and support for additional channels via extensions.

What Can clankie Do?

• 🌐 Web UI — Browser-based chat interface with real-time streaming (web-ui/)
• 📎 Handle attachments — Upload images (vision models), documents, code files
• 🔄 Session management — Switch between conversations with /switch, /sessions, /new commands
• 🔌 pi ecosystem — Works with pi extensions, skills, and prompt templates
• 🧩 Extension UI Spec — Declarative UI for extensions (forms, switches, selects) rendered in the browser
• 🔐 API Provider Auth — Configure OAuth and API keys for AI providers through the Web UI
• 🔒 Privacy-first — Runs on your machine, your credentials, your data

Installation

1. Install Dependencies

Runtime: Node.js v18+

# Check Node version
node --version  # Should be >= v18.0.0

2. Quick Install via npm

npm install -g clankie

3. Or: Install from Source

git clone https://github.com/thiagovarela/clankie
cd clankie
npm install
npm link

Quick Start

clankie init
clankie login
clankie start

You should see output like:

[daemon] Starting clankie daemon (pid 12345)...
[daemon] Workspace: /Users/you/.clankie/workspace
[daemon] Channels: web
[web] WebSocket server listening on port 3100
[daemon] Ready. Waiting for messages...

Then open the connect URL printed by the daemon.

Screenshots

Chat view

API provider auth

Extensions UI

Using clankie

Web UI

1. Start the daemon: clankie start
2. Open the connect URL from logs (or use http://localhost:3100?token=<your-token>)
3. Start chatting

Settings Pages

The Web UI includes built-in settings pages accessible from the sidebar:

Authentication (/settings/auth)
Configure AI provider credentials:

• OAuth login for supported providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, GitHub Copilot, etc.)
• API key entry for providers that support direct authentication
• View and manage existing authentications

Extensions (/settings/extensions)
Browse and configure loaded extensions:

• View registered tools, commands, flags, and shortcuts
• Interactive configuration forms for extensions with UI Spec
• Install new packages via chat commands

Session Management Commands

When chatting through channels, you can use:

/switch <name>    Switch to a different session
/sessions         List all sessions
/new              Start a fresh session (clears context)

CLI Commands

# Send a one-off message (prints response and exits)
clankie send "What files are in the current directory?"

# Shorthand (no subcommand needed)
clankie "Summarize recent git commits"

# Check daemon status
clankie status

# Update clankie and restart daemon/service if needed
clankie self-update

# Stop daemon
clankie stop

# View configuration
clankie config show

Configuration

Config file: ~/.clankie/clankie.json (JSON5 format — comments and trailing commas allowed)

Common Settings

# Web channel
clankie config set channels.web.authToken "your-secret-token"
clankie config set channels.web.port 3100

# Optional: same-origin static hosting from daemon
clankie config set channels.web.staticDir "/path/to/web-ui/.output/public"

# AI model
clankie config set agent.model.primary "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5"

# Workspace (where agent works)
clankie config set agent.workspace "~/projects"

Config Reference

| Path | Description | Example | |------|-------------|---------| | agent.workspace | Agent working directory | "~/projects" | | agent.model.primary | Primary AI model | "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5" | | channels.web.authToken | Web auth token | "your-secret-token" | | channels.web.port | Web channel port | 3100 | | channels.web.allowedOrigins | Allowed origins (optional) | ["https://example.com"] | | channels.web.staticDir | Static web-ui directory (optional) | "/path/to/web-ui-dist" | | channels.web.enabled | Enable/disable web channel | true (default) |

Running as a Service

clankie daemon install
clankie daemon status
clankie daemon logs
clankie daemon uninstall

Development

npm run dev send "hello"
npm run build
npm run check
npm run check:fix
npm run format

Troubleshooting

"No channels configured" error

Configure the web channel:

clankie config set channels.web.authToken "your-secret-token"
clankie config set channels.web.port 3100

Daemon won't start after reboot

clankie daemon status
clankie daemon logs

If needed:

clankie daemon uninstall
clankie daemon install

Architecture

How the Web UI Talks to PI

clankie uses a WebSocket RPC protocol that bridges the browser to pi's agent sessions:

┌─────────────┐      WebSocket       ┌──────────────┐      RPC      ┌─────────────┐
│   Web UI    │ ◄──────────────────► │    Daemon    │ ◄───────────► │  pi Agent   │
│  (Browser)  │   JSON messages      │   (Node.js)  │   (local)     │   (SDK)     │
└─────────────┘                      └──────────────┘               └─────────────┘

Protocol flow:

1. Connection — Web UI connects to ws://localhost:3100 with auth token
2. Session binding — Each tab gets its own session ID; multiple sessions per connection
3. Bidirectional messages:
   • Client → Server: RpcCommand (prompt, steer, abort, set_model, etc.)
   • Server → Client: AgentSessionEvent (message_start, message_update, tool_execution_start, etc.)
4. Streaming — Assistant responses stream token-by-token via message_update events
5. Authentication — Auth tokens via query param (?token=...) or HTTP-only cookies

See web-ui/src/lib/types.ts for the full protocol types.

API Provider Configuration via UI

clankie provides a built-in settings page for managing AI provider authentication:

Supported auth methods:

• OAuth — Browser-based login flows (Anthropic, OpenAI, GitHub Copilot, etc.)
• API Key — Direct entry of API keys for providers that support it

How it works:

1. Extensions register providers via pi.registerProvider() with optional oauth config
2. Web UI fetches available providers via get_auth_providers RPC
3. OAuth flows open in browser, callbacks handled by local HTTP server
4. Credentials stored securely by clankie daemon (never in browser)
5. Authenticated providers automatically available for model selection

Configuration:

// In an extension
pi.registerProvider("my-provider", {
  baseUrl: "https://api.example.com",
  api: "anthropic-messages",
  models: [...],
  oauth: {
    name: "My Provider",
    async login(callbacks) {
      callbacks.onAuth({ url: "https://auth.example.com/..." });
      const code = await callbacks.onPrompt({ message: "Enter code:" });
      return { refresh: code, access: code, expires: Date.now() + 3600000 };
    }
  }
});

Extension UI Spec

Extensions can define declarative UI components that render as native forms in the Web UI:

How it works:

1. Create a ui-spec.json next to your extension (or export UI_SPEC inline)
2. Define components (Card, Stack, Switch, Input, Select, Button, Text)
3. Bind component values to extension config/state
4. Web UI renders the spec as interactive React components
5. Actions flow back to the extension via RPC

Example ui-spec.json:

{
  "root": "my-extension-card",
  "elements": {
    "my-extension-card": {
      "type": "Card",
      "props": { "title": "My Extension", "description": "Configuration" },
      "children": ["settings-stack"]
    },
    "settings-stack": {
      "type": "Stack",
      "props": { "direction": "vertical", "gap": "md" },
      "children": ["enabled-switch", "save-button"]
    },
    "enabled-switch": {
      "type": "Switch",
      "props": {
        "label": "Enable feature",
        "checked": { "$bindState": "/config/enabled" }
      }
    },
    "save-button": {
      "type": "Button",
      "props": { "label": "Save", "variant": "primary" },
      "on": {
        "press": {
          "action": "saveExtensionConfig",
          "params": { "enabled": { "$state": "/config/enabled" } }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

UI Spec locations (checked in order):

• {extension-path}.ui.json
• {extension-dir}/ui-spec.json
• Package root ui-spec.json

Supported component types:

• Card — Container with title/description
• Stack — Vertical/horizontal layout container
• Switch — Toggle boolean values
• Input — Text input with labels
• Select — Dropdown with options
• Button — Action triggers
• Text — Static or dynamic text

State binding:

• { "$bindState": "/config/key" } — Two-way binding to extension config
• { "$state": "/path" } — Read-only state reference
• Static values for labels, placeholders, etc.

See the heartbeat extension for a working example.

How It Works

clankie is a thin wrapper around pi:

1. Web channel accepts RPC over WebSocket
2. Daemon routes messages to persistent agent sessions (one per chat)
3. Agent uses pi's SDK with full tool access
4. Sessions persist across restarts in ~/.clankie/sessions/

Credits

Built on pi by @badlogic.

License

MIT