Ox

The open coding agent. A terminal-native AI pair-programmer in the spirit of Claude Code, powered by the ox-alpha model through OpenRouter.

npm i -g oxcode-cli
cd your-project
ox

No account. No subscription. No key hunting.

What it does

Ox lives in your terminal, reads your codebase, edits files, runs commands, searches, tracks its own progress, asks you questions when stuck, and verifies its work — the full agentic loop:

• Interactive REPL — streaming answers, message queueing, Esc to interrupt, per-project session history, Shift+Tab permission modes (manual → accept edits → plan → bypass).
• Tools — Bash (with background tasks + KillShell), Read (line-numbered, images), Write, Edit (exact-string replace), Glob, Grep (ripgrep fast-path), WebFetch, TodoWrite, AskUserQuestion, plus any MCP tool.
• Subagents — isolated context windows for exploration: built-in Explore and general-purpose, or define your own in .ox/agents/*.md.
• Memory — AGENTS.md / OX.md loaded from your home dir and every ancestor of your project, with @import support (CLAUDE.md picked up as a compatibility fallback).
• Skills — custom slash commands from .ox/commands/*.md or .claude/commands/*.md with $ARGUMENTS substitution and allowed-tools.
• Hooks — shell-command policy on SessionStart/End, UserPromptSubmit, PreToolUse (allow/deny/ask), PostToolUse and Stop events, configured in settings files.
• MCP — connect stdio servers via .mcp.json or ox mcp add; their tools show up as mcp__server__tool.
• Headless — ox -p "…" for scripts and CI, with --output-format text|json|stream-json, stdin piping, --max-turns, allow/deny tool lists.

Model access

Ox talks OpenRouter's chat-completions API. Endpoint resolution:

1. OX_BASE_URL env or gateway in settings (advanced),
2. your own key (OX_API_KEY > OPENROUTER_API_KEY > ~/.ox/key) against OpenRouter directly,
3. otherwise the bundled free gateway.

Model selection: OX_MODEL env > model setting > default stealth/ox-alpha.

Settings

Precedence: flags > .ox/settings.local.json > .ox/settings.json > ~/.ox/settings.json.

// .ox/settings.json
{
  "model": "stealth/ox-alpha",
  "permissions": {
    "defaultMode": "default",
    "allow": ["Bash(git status)", "Bash(npm run test *)"],
    "deny": ["Read(./.env)"],
    "additionalDirectories": []
  },
  "env": {},
  "autoCompactTokens": 160000
}

Permission rules use Tool(specifier) grammar: Bash(git diff *) (prefix), Edit(/src/**) (glob), WebFetch(domain:example.com).

Sessions

Transcripts are append-only JSONL under ~/.ox/projects/<project>/. Continue where you left off:

ox -c              # most recent session in this project
ox -r <session-id> # resume by id (any project)

In-session: /resume lists recent sessions, /export writes markdown, /compact summarizes long conversations (also runs automatically near the context limit).

Slash commands

/help /init /compact /clear /model /resume /permissions /memory /config /status /cost /add-dir /agents /hooks /mcp /doctor /export /exit

Development

git clone https://github.com/theabecaster/ox && cd ox
npm install
npm run check   # typecheck + lint + test + build

License

AGPL-3.0 — forks must stay open. See SECURITY.md for key-handling notes.