mini-coder (mc) is a terminal coding agent, hand crafted for transparency and good engineering performance.

Install

$ bun add -g mini-coder
$ mc

Why mini-coder?

• Lean on proven dependencies — pi-ai for providers, streaming, tool calling, usage tracking, and OAuth. cel-tui for the terminal UI. The core stays focused on agent work.
• Flat, simple codebase — no workspaces, no internal abstraction layers. Files grouped by concern in a single src/ directory.
• Agent-first — every decision serves the goal of reading code, making changes, and verifying them via the shell.
• Performance — startup and turn latency matter more than features.
• Streaming end-to-end — assistant text, reasoning, tool calls, and tool output show up as they happen.
• Isolation friendly— works inside nono. Suggested profile in nono-mini-coder.json

Settings

Warning, settings have changed, update your old settings file!

Global defaults live in ~/.config/mini-coder/settings.json.

Create or edit it directly to set the default provider, model, reasoning effort, and any custom models. customProviders entries use the pi-ai Model shape; the top-level provider and model select the active entry.

{
  "provider": "ollama",
  "model": "llama3.1:8b",
  "effort": "medium",
  "customProviders": [
    {
      "id": "llama3.1:8b",
      "name": "Llama 3.1 8B (Ollama)",
      "api": "openai-completions",
      "provider": "ollama",
      "baseUrl": "http://localhost:11434/v1",
      "reasoning": false,
      "input": ["text"],
      "cost": {
        "input": 0,
        "output": 0,
        "cacheRead": 0,
        "cacheWrite": 0
      },
      "contextWindow": 128000,
      "maxTokens": 32000
    }
  ]
}

Use api: "openai-completions" for OpenAI-compatible servers such as Ollama, vLLM, LiteLLM, and local proxies. For local OpenAI-compatible custom providers, mini-coder supplies the dummy API key required by pi-ai when no real key is needed.

Also makes LLMs smarter

LLMs famously tell you to walk 50 meters to the car wash — forgetting the car needs to be there too. Not on our watch.

License

MIT