AbdoKnbGit/tau: Tau is an open-source AI coding agent built for developers who want control. It runs in your terminal, supports multiple model providers, and helps you write, debug, refactor, and ship code without locking you into one ecosystem.

Tau is an open-source AI coding agent built for developers who want control. It runs in your terminal, supports multiple model providers, and helps you write, debug, refactor, and ship code without...

Summary

Tau is a TypeScript CLI coding agent with native adapters for 28 model providers (Anthropic, OpenRouter, Ollama, Gemini, NVIDIA, and others), so you pick a model and provider without a proxy layer in between. It bundles an agent loop, search, snapshots, browser automation, a persistent Python kernel, and a "cheap mode" that disables skills, subagents, and MCP servers to reduce cost.

What it is useful for

Tau is useful when you want one CLI for coding work across many providers with built-in monitoring and a persistent Python kernel for batch jobs such as aggregating many CSV files in a single cell. It helps triage and ship changes through /github (issues, PRs, labels, workflow status, stage/commit/push via gh), and lets you steer a session from a phone via /remote local (LAN) or /remote global (Cloudflare tunnel). Snapshots live in a shadow git repo so you can restore a working tree without touching your real branches, and named subagents stay alive between tasks so you can hand them follow-up work without re-sending context. The /learned command proposes a reusable lesson after substantial tasks and saves approved ones to memory across sessions.

How engineers can use it

Documented setup path:

1. npx -y @abdoknbgit/tau-installer@latest
2. Run tau, type /login, pick a provider
3. /models to switch model, /tools to toggle optional features, /mode cheap for a cache-stable core, /mode normal to re-enable configured tools, tau update to upgrade, tau --dangerously-skip-permissions to skip permission prompts

Requirements from the README: Node.js 20.19+ or 22.12+ (require(esm) support), Git, Bash, gh for GitHub automation, and Go 1.25.8+ to build the optional native helpers from source. Tau reads existing team rules from AGENTS.md, .cursor/rules/*.mdc, .github/instructions, and skills from .agents/skills or ~/.agents/skills.

Documented limitations: LSP is off by default and opt-in via /config or lspEnabled: true in .claude/settings.local.json, and it can use substantial RAM on large projects; snapshots skip files over 2 MB and prune weekly; the global remote link requires cloudflared; the Firecrawl search backend is limited to 1,000 searches per month on its free plan. Full command list is in COMMANDS.md and provider notes are in PROVIDERS.md; the license is MIT.