Hmbown/CodeWhale

A terminal coding agent written in Rust that runs any model — open models first — through a single runtime and toolset.

What it is

Codewhale is a command-line coding agent that reads your code, edits files, runs commands, checks its own work, and stops when the task is done or it needs input. It is model-agnostic: you give it a provider, a model, and a task, and can switch models mid-task with /model. It began as deepseek-tui and was generalized so that the model is a swappable component rather than the product, aimed at developers who want one runtime across hosted, gateway, and local model routes.

Key features

One runtime and toolset across DeepSeek, Claude, GPT, Kimi, GLM, and 30+ providers, plus local vLLM, SGLang, or Ollama with no key required; context budgets and prices come from the real route, and an unknown price is shown as unknown rather than $0.
Safety by construction: Plan mode is read-only, approvals gate risky calls, and an OS sandbox uses Seatbelt, Landlock, seccomp, or bwrap; a repo constitution.json compiles into write holds that even Full Access cannot skip.
Fleets that record every step in an append-only ledger, with fleet resume to pick up where you stopped and a per-turn receipt you can inspect.
Multiple entry points: an interactive TUI, codewhale exec for scripts and CI, and codewhale web for a loopback-only browser client on 127.0.0.1.
In-TUI controls: /model to switch provider and model together, /fleet to run a team of workers, /restore to undo a turn, Tab to cycle Plan/Act/Operate, Shift+Tab to cycle Ask/Auto-Review/Full Access approval postures, and ! to run a shell command through the normal approval path.

Tech stack

Rust, edition 2024, rust-version = "1.88" (relies on let_chains), organized as a Cargo workspace (resolver = "2") with many crates (agent, app-server, cli, config, execpolicy, hooks, lane, mcp, protocol, secrets, state, tools, tui, workflow, workflow-js).
Async runtime and networking: tokio 1.50 (multi-thread), axum 0.8.5, reqwest 0.13.1 with rustls (no default provider, socks), rustls 0.23.
Storage and config: rusqlite 0.39 (bundled SQLite), toml / toml_edit, serde / serde_json, jsonschema 0.47.
CLI and workflow: clap 4.5 with clap_complete; rquickjs 0.12 (a single-threaded QuickJS VM bridged to the engine over channels) for the Workflow VM.
Observability and misc: tracing / tracing-subscriber / tracing-appender, mimalloc allocator; release profile uses lto = true, codegen-units = 1, and deliberately keeps unwinding (no panic = "abort") so a panicking tool call fails gracefully.
Distribution: npm workspace (codewhale, deepseek-tui, runtime-sdk; devDependency wrangler) and crates.io (codewhale-cli), version 0.9.1.
MCP support via a dedicated crates/mcp.

When to reach for it

You want a single terminal coding agent that works across many hosted and local providers without wiring a separate key per provider.
You need to switch models mid-task or route work to open models first.
You want read-only planning, explicit approval gates, and OS-level sandboxing before an agent touches your machine.
You want durable, resumable agent runs with an append-only ledger and per-turn receipts, including in CI via a headless exec mode.
You want to enforce repo-level write policy through a constitution.json that even full-access runs cannot bypass.

When not to reach for it

You want a graphical IDE experience rather than a terminal TUI plus optional loopback browser client.
You are committed to a single vendor's tightly integrated assistant and do not need multi-provider routing or model swapping.
You cannot install a recent Rust toolchain (1.88+) when building from source, or your platform lacks the sandbox primitives the safety model expects.
You need a mature, long-stable release line; the project is at an early 0.x version and moving quickly.

Maturity signal

The repository was created in January 2026 and is pushed to almost daily, so it is under active, fast-moving development. Its large star and fork counts were gathered in only a few months, indicating strong early adoption rather than a long-settled tool, and the several hundred open issues fit a young project with a growing contributor base. The workspace version is 0.9.1 — pre-1.0 — and the MIT license plus the "independent community project, not affiliated with any model provider" framing signal an open, contribution-driven effort. Read it as actively maintained and popular, but still stabilizing toward a 1.0.

Alternatives

Aider — reach for it when you prefer a Python-based terminal assistant with tight git-commit integration over a Rust runtime.
OpenAI Codex CLI — use when you want a vendor-maintained terminal agent and are comfortable centering it on one provider's models.
Claude Code — use when you want a single-vendor, supported coding agent rather than a community project that puts open models first and swaps providers freely.

Notes

Pricing and context budgets are derived from the actual resolved route, and the project is explicit that an unknown price surfaces as "unknown" instead of being silently rendered as $0.
Migration is a first-class concern: users coming from deepseek-tui are told their config and sessions carry over, and the repo keeps a docs/REBRAND.md. The README ships in seven languages.

Wiki: Hmbown/CodeWhale