Use Kimi CLI to Call Kimi Model

Kimi CLI (opens in a new tab) is a new CLI agent that can help you with your software development tasks and terminal operations.

IMPORTANT Kimi CLI is currently in technical preview.

Key features

• Shell-like UI and raw shell command execution
• Zsh integration
• Agent Client Protocol (opens in a new tab) support
• MCP support
• And more to come...

Installation

IMPORTANT Kimi CLI currently only supports macOS and Linux. Windows support is coming soon.

Kimi CLI is published as a Python package on PyPI. We highly recommend installing it with uv (opens in a new tab). If you have not installed uv yet, please follow the instructions here (opens in a new tab) to install it first.

Once uv is installed, you can install Kimi CLI with:

uv tool install --python 3.13 kimi-cli

Run kimi --help to check if Kimi CLI is installed successfully.

IMPORTANT Due to the security checks on macOS, the first time you run kimi command may take 10 seconds or more depending on your system environment.

Upgrading

Upgrade Kimi CLI to the latest version with:

uv tool upgrade kimi-cli --no-cache

Usage

Run kimi command in the directory you want to work on, then send /setup to setup Kimi CLI:

After setup, Kimi CLI will be ready to use. You can send /help to get more information.

Features

Shell mode

Kimi CLI is not only a coding agent, but also a shell. You can switch the mode by pressing Ctrl-X. In shell mode, you can directly run shell commands without leaving Kimi CLI.

NOTE Built-in shell commands like cd are not supported yet.

Zsh integration

You can use Kimi CLI together with Zsh, to empower your shell experience with AI agent capabilities.

Install the zsh-kimi-cli (opens in a new tab) plugin via:

git clone https://github.com/MoonshotAI/zsh-kimi-cli.git \
  ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/kimi-cli

NOTE If you are using a plugin manager other than Oh My Zsh, you may need to refer to the plugin's README for installation instructions.

Then add kimi-cli to your Zsh plugin list in ~/.zshrc:

plugins=(... kimi-cli)

After restarting Zsh, you can switch to agent mode by pressing Ctrl-X.

ACP support

Kimi CLI supports Agent Client Protocol (opens in a new tab) out of the box. You can use it together with any ACP-compatible editor or IDE.

For example, to use Kimi CLI with Zed (opens in a new tab), add the following configuration to your ~/.config/zed/settings.json:

{
  "agent_servers": {
    "Kimi CLI": {
      "command": "kimi",
      "args": ["--acp"],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

Then you can create Kimi CLI threads in Zed's agent panel.

Using MCP tools

Kimi CLI supports the well-established MCP config convention. For example:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "context7": {
      "url": "https://mcp.context7.com/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "CONTEXT7_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY"
      }
    },
    "chrome-devtools": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "chrome-devtools-mcp@latest"]
    }
  }
}

Run kimi with --mcp-config-file option to connect to the specified MCP servers:

kimi --mcp-config-file /path/to/mcp.json

Kimi CLI More Usage

Besides the above features, you can also use kimi --help to view more usage of Kimi CLI. Or visit the Kimi CLI documentation (opens in a new tab) for more information.

Kimi Agent SDK

Kimi Agent SDK provides a programmatic interface to interact with the Kimi CLI, enabling you to:

• Build custom applications - Integrate Kimi Agent into your own tools and workflows
• Automate tasks - Script complex multi-turn conversations
• Extend capabilities - Register custom tools that the model can call
• Handle approvals - Programmatically respond to permission requests

Available SDKs:

• Go - go (opens in a new tab)
• Node.js - node/agent_sdk (opens in a new tab)
• Python - python (opens in a new tab)

For detailed information, see Kimi Agent SDK GitHub repository (opens in a new tab).