Nori CLI

Nori CLI is an open-source terminal user interface (TUI) and harness for AI coding agents, developed by Tilework Tech. Built in Rust, it acts as an orchestration client and interactive workspace designed to interface with standardized Agent Client Protocol (ACP) backends, allowing developers to drive AI agents directly from the command line. In daily workflows, Nori provides a structured chat and execution environment in the terminal. It interfaces with external agent backends such as Claude Agent and Codex, surfacing real-time execution states, context metrics, git status, and interactive prompt cards. It also incorporates WebSocket support to fan out canonical prompts and synchronized sessions across multiple frontends. What distinguishes Nori CLI is its strict adherence to open agent protocols and client-side decoupling. Rather than hardcoding a single AI provider, it standardizes session state, error handling, and agent skills via ACP, offering granular session inspection, metadata filtering, and customizable footer and bottom-pane widgets for terminal-centric development. The project is open-source and publicly maintained on GitHub by Tilework Tech, actively evolving with modular agent skill configurations and multi-agent protocol tooling.

Tags: agent harness, ai agent, cli, developer tools, OpenSource

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Key features

• Agent Client Protocol (ACP) integration — Standardized harness connecting to compliant agent backends including Claude Agent and Codex. - Interactive Rust-based TUI — Terminal interface featuring chat history widgets, customizable footer segments, status cards, and real-time context display. - WebSocket prompt fan-out — Synchronizes and distributes canonical user prompts and session updates across connected frontends. - Custom agent skills framework — Modular configuration system in .agents for defining and registering custom ACP agent behaviors. - Resilient error handling & telemetry — Captures and surfaces agent-side errors (such as retry states and failure messages) without noisy metadata clutter. - Session metadata management — Tracks git status, active thread goals, bounded session titles, and agent lifecycle state in the status footer.

Use cases

Use Case: Orchestrating ACP-Compliant Coding Agents Developers can run standard agent protocols like Claude Agent or Codex within an interactive terminal interface, monitoring tool executions, session status, and workspace diffs in real time.

Use Case: Custom Agent Skill Development Engineers building proprietary or experimental coding agents can register custom agent skills under .agents to prototype and test interactions against a standard TUI harness.

Use Case: Synchronized Multi-Frontend Agent Workflows Teams or developers operating across multiple terminal windows can use Nori's WebSocket session distribution to mirror prompts and agent progress across client frontends simultaneously.

Who it is for

Nori CLI is designed for developers, agent framework authors, and command-line power users seeking a standardized, protocol-driven TUI harness for running and debugging AI coding agents. It is less suited for users looking for a fully managed GUI IDE plugin or a simple zero-config wrapper around a single commercial LLM API.

Install guide

Installation Nori CLI is distributed as a Rust project. Clone the repository and build it locally using Cargo: bash # Clone the repository git clone https://github.com/tilework-tech/nori-cli.git cd nori-cli # Build release binary (requires Cargo and Rust toolchain) cargo build --release # Optionally link or move the binary to your PATH sudo cp target/release/nori /usr/local/bin/

First Run Ensure your agent backend or environment credentials (such as Anthropic or OpenAI API keys) are configured in your shell environment, then initialize Nori: bash # Export relevant agent environment variables if required by your ACP backend export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="your-api-key" # Launch the Nori CLI interface nori

Example Session Launch Nori inside a git repository to inspect workspace context and delegate a task to an ACP agent: bash # Start a session in the current directory nori # Within the TUI prompt, issue a task > /status > Refactor the connection handler in src/server.rs to handle graceful WebSocket disconnects and write tests.

Part of CLI Coding Agents

Categories: AI Coding Agents, Developer Tools

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