Nova Agent CLI

Autonomous AI coding agent for your terminal — like Claude Code, but free.

  ◆ Nova (tencent/hy3-preview:free)

  ❯ Fix the bug in auth.py where login returns 401
  │ Let me read the file first...
  ⚡ read_file {"path":"auth.py"}
  ⚡ edit_file {"path":"auth.py"...}
  ✓ Task completed in 3 iterations

Install

npm install -g nova-agent-cli

Requires Node.js 18+.

Quick Start

# Start interactive session (like Claude Code)
nova

# First run: Nova will guide you through setup
# Get a free API key at https://openrouter.ai/keys

Usage

Interactive mode (default)

nova

Type any coding task and Nova will autonomously complete it:

• Create files and write code
• Fix bugs and failing tests
• Refactor and improve existing code
• Search and navigate codebases

Single task

nova agent --prompt "Add error handling to utils.py"
nova agent --prompt "Create a Flask API with /health endpoint" --model "tencent/hy3-preview:free"

Initialize in a project

cd my-project
nova init

Creates .nova/config.json with project-specific settings.

Commands inside the REPL

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | /models | Browse & select model interactively | | /model <id> | Set model by ID | | /model delete <id> | Remove a custom model | | /provider | Switch API provider | | /workspace <path> | Change working directory | | /iter <n> | Set max iterations (default: 40) | | /debug | Toggle debug mode | | /status | Show current settings | | /history | Show recent prompts | | /help | Show all commands | | /exit | Quit |

Free Models

All free via OpenRouter — no credit card needed:

| Model | SWE-bench | Best For | |-------|-----------|----------| | tencent/hy3-preview:free | 74.4% | Everything (default) | | qwen/qwen-2.5-coder-32b-instruct:free | ~60% | Coding tasks | | openrouter/free | varies | Auto-select |

Also works with Puter for free access to Claude, GPT-5, Gemini.

Configuration

Settings are saved to ~/.nova_config:

{
  "model": "tencent/hy3-preview:free",
  "apiBase": "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1",
  "maxIterations": 40,
  "customModels": []
}

Or set via environment variables:

export NOVA_API_KEY=sk-or-v1-...
export NOVA_API_BASE=https://openrouter.ai/api/v1
export NOVA_MODEL=tencent/hy3-preview:free

Benchmark

# Run on custom tasks
nova bench --tasks tasks.jsonl --output results.jsonl

# Run SWE-bench evaluation
nova bench --tasks swe-bench-verified.jsonl --output predictions.jsonl --limit 10

Requirements

• Node.js 18+
• Free API key from openrouter.ai/keys (no credit card)

License

MIT