Tau is an open-source terminal-based AI coding agent developed by Hugging Face. It provides an interactive CLI environment designed to assist developers with code generation, codebase exploration, and automated refactoring directly from the command line. In daily use, Tau operates through an interactive terminal interface supporting multi-turn dialogue, tool use, and file system manipulation. It accommodates multiple backend providers, supporting major cloud model APIs (such as Google Gemini with streaming output) as well as offline, local model inference via built-in llama.cpp integration accessible via the /local command. Tau differentiates itself through its tight integration with both open-source local inference stacks and cloud providers, alongside an extensible architecture. Developers can write extensions to inject tools or append custom sections directly into system prompts. It also offers fine-grained runtime control over reasoning models via CLI flags like thinking depth configuration. Tau is open source and hosted on GitHub under the Hugging Face organization. It is free to use, requiring developers to either supply their own API keys or run self-hosted local weights.
Tags: ai agent, cli, code assistant, coding agent, developer tools, OpenSource
/local command. - Multi-Provider Support — Connect to various cloud inference providers, including robust streaming integration with Google models. - Custom Extension System — Author repository extensions that dynamically append system prompt sections and expose specialized tooling. - Configurable Thinking Budgets — Control model reasoning and thinking levels at startup using the --thinking (-t) command-line flag. - Native Python/uv Integration — Designed around modern Python packaging workflows with fast dependency management.Tau is designed for developers, ML engineers, and CLI-centric programmers who require a customizable, open-source coding agent that supports both cloud APIs and offline local models. It is less suitable for users looking for a prepackaged GUI IDE plugin or a zero-configuration point-and-click tool.
uv: bash # Clone the repository git clone https://github.com/huggingface/tau.git cd tau # Install dependencies and project environment using uv uv syncbash # For cloud-backed models export GEMINI_API_KEY="your-gemini-api-key" # Launch the Tau CLI uv run tau To run locally with llama.cpp, launch Tau and use the /local command inside the session or point to a local model path.bash uv run tau -t high "Analyze tests/test_parser.py, fix failing assertions, and run the test suite."Part of CLI Coding Agents
Categories: AI Coding Agents, Code Assistants, Developer Tools