CodeWhale is a community-built terminal agent that runs locally and works with the models you actually use — Arcee Trinity, GLM, DeepSeek, Kimi, MiniMax, OpenRouter, and more. A full tool surface, approval gates, snapshots you can roll back, sub-agents, and sessions you can resume.
# npm — no Rust toolchain required $ npm install -g codewhale $ codewhale
# Cargo / Homebrew / direct download: # /install
0.8.61 focuses on the runtime control plane: sub-agents stop freezing the TUI, provider/model routes can vary by role, route state is isolated per session, and Arcee AI joins the public provider catalog for open-model work.
sub-agent progress is coalesced off the render path, completion resumes the parent turn, and multi-worker stress coverage guards input/render/cancel liveness.
sub-agents can run with explicit provider/model, strength, and thinking controls, so scouts, verifiers, and synthesis work can use different routes.
the provider catalog now includes Arcee AI alongside DeepSeek, GLM/Z.ai, Kimi, MiniMax, OpenRouter, local vLLM/SGLang/Ollama, and more.
Every agent claims to be aligned and trustworthy. CodeWhale can prove it — the Constitution shows up in the model's reasoning, citing "Article II" and "Article V" as it decides. These are real traces from an actual session, paired with the decision each produced.
› Let me be careful and truthful here. Per Article II (truth) and V (verification), I need to report what's actually in the tree — not what the previous agent claimed.
› The user's current request outranks the runtime statute — so I keep executing the task, not stopping on a technicality.
› Deleting community credit would break the project's own ethos. Relocate it instead — zero names lost.
A model generates text; an agent leaves consequences. CodeWhale puts the structure for those consequences around the model: self, authority, evidence, and tools, each in its place.
The agent is not a model card or leaderboard score. It is an instance in this terminal, this workspace, this session. Give it an address before you ask it to act.
Global Constitution, current user request, runtime statutes, repo-local law, live evidence, memory, personality, and old handoffs each have a rank. When they conflict, the agent has an order to follow.
Files, shell, git, web, MCP, sub-agents, rollback, and diagnostics are runtime surfaces. The model does not claim verification as a mood; it has to leave evidence.
The hard part is not making the model do more at once. It is keeping intent, authority, evidence, and contributor context clear enough for the next maintainer to inherit.
Good agent work is not a pile of activity. It is a reviewable line: request, investigation, patch, verification, credit.
The harness carries the heavy parts: constitutional prompts, structured trust, feedback loops, rollback, and handoffs that survive the session. The model can keep its attention on the task itself.
The current user request defines the goal, constraints, and success bar.
The agent reads code, uses tools, delegates when useful, and keeps the evidence visible.
The output stays small, reproducible, testable, and respectful of branch and contributor context.
The maintainer sees what changed, what was verified, what risk remains, and who deserves credit.
flowchart TD
A["You type<br/>(TUI · ratatui)"] -->|Op channel| B["Engine<br/>turn loop + tools"]
B -->|HTTPS / SSE| C["DeepSeek API<br/>V4 family"]
C -->|stream events| B
B -->|tool call| T["read_file · edit_file · grep<br/>apply_patch · exec_shell<br/>mcp_<server>_<tool>"]
T -->|approval Y/N| P["Approval<br/>dialog"]
P --> B
T -->|exec| S["Sandbox<br/>seatbelt · landlock · win32"]
classDef accent fill:#e9eefe,stroke:#0e0e10,stroke-width:1px;
classDef api fill:#0e0e10,stroke:#0e0e10,color:#ffffff;
class C api;
class T,P,S accent;This dispatch is regenerated by DeepSeek V4-Flash on a six-hour cron. Until the cron fills in fresh repo activity, the static links below are the best starting points.
npm, Cargo, Homebrew, or a direct download.
Start with anything labelled good first issue.
What is confirmed, what is being weighed, what is ruled out.
This release merged and harvested a large community tranche. The full notes live in the changelog; this keeps the latest public credit surface easy to find.
Full changelog →No CLA. No sponsor lockouts. The maintainer reads everything personally, issues are triaged in the open, and releases cut from main.