darce-cli is an open-source terminal coding agent created by Amer Sarhan. Built in TypeScript with an Ink-powered terminal UI, it provides an interactive assistant designed for rapid startup and low-latency interaction directly from the developer console. In daily use, darce-cli runs as an interactive TUI supporting streaming Markdown rendering, syntax highlighting, multiline prompts, and slash commands. It interfaces with language models primarily through OpenRouter using Server-Sent Events (SSE) streaming and retry handling. The tool routes requests across models such as Qwen 3 Coder (default), Grok 4.1 Fast, Claude, and DeepSeek, allowing engineers to switch active models dynamically via a Ctrl+M keyboard picker. File and shell modifications are executed through seven built-in, Zod-validated tools: Bash, Read, Write, Edit, Glob, Grep, and WebFetch. What differentiates darce-cli from heavier coding assistants is its focus on fast startup times (sub-200ms cold start via lazy imports) combined with essential workflow utilities like git-aware context capture, automated context compaction, per-model cost tracking, session persistence, and configurable auto-approve modes. The project is open-source under a public repository structure and designed to connect to user-provided OpenRouter credentials for per-token execution costs.
Tags: ai agent, cli, coding agent, developer tools, terminal