Kapela CLI

A CLI for querying enterprise knowledge from Kapela. Includes an interactive chat TUI for humans and non-interactive commands for AI agents and scripts.

Installation

pip install kapela-cli

Or with uv:

uv pip install kapela-cli

Setup

Run the interactive chat TUI — on first launch it will guide you through setup:

kapela-cli chat

This prompts for your Kapela server URL and personal access token (PAT), tests the connection, and saves config to ~/.config/kapela-cli/config.json (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kapela-cli/config.json if set). To reconfigure later, use the /configure command inside the TUI.

Environment variables override config file values:

Variable	Required	Description
KAPELA_SERVER_URL	No	Server URL
KAPELA_PAT	No	Personal access token for authentication (required if no config file)
KAPELA_PERSONA_ID	No	Default agent/persona ID
KAPELA_STREAM_MARKDOWN	No	Enable/disable progressive markdown rendering (true/false)
KAPELA_SSH_HOST_KEY	No	Path to SSH host key for serve command

Usage

Interactive chat

kapela-cli chat
kapela-cli chat --no-stream-markdown

Flag	Description
--no-stream-markdown	Disable progressive markdown rendering during streaming

One-shot question

kapela-cli ask "What is our company's PTO policy?"
kapela-cli ask --agent-id 5 "Summarize this topic"
kapela-cli ask --json "Hello"

Flag	Description
--agent-id <int>	Agent ID to use (overrides default)
--json	Output NDJSON stream events instead of plain text
--prompt <string>	Question text (use with piped stdin context)
--quiet	Buffer output and print once at end
--max-output <int>	Max bytes before truncating (0 to disable)

List agents

kapela-cli agents
kapela-cli agents --json

Serve over SSH

# Start a public SSH endpoint for the CLI TUI
kapela-cli serve --host 0.0.0.0 --port 2222

# Connect as a client
ssh your-host -p 2222

Clients can either:

• paste a personal access token (PAT) at the login prompt, or
• skip the prompt by sending KAPELA_PAT over SSH:

export KAPELA_PAT=your-pat
ssh -o SendEnv=KAPELA_PAT your-host -p 2222

Useful hardening flags:

• --host-key (default ~/.config/kapela-cli/host_ed25519)
• --idle-timeout (default 15m)
• --max-session-timeout (default 8h)
• --rate-limit-per-minute (default 20)
• --rate-limit-burst (default 40)
• --rate-limit-cache (default 4096)

Commands

Command	Mode	Description
chat	Interactive	Launch the interactive chat TUI (requires terminal)
ask	Agent / Script	Ask a question and print the answer to stdout
agents	Agent / Script	List available agents (ID, name, description)
validate-config	Agent / Script	Check CLI configuration and server connectivity
install-skill	Agent / Script	Install the Kapela CLI agent skill file
experiments	Agent / Script	List experimental features and their status
serve	Interactive	Serve the Kapela TUI over SSH

Global Flags

Flag	Description
--version, -v	Print client and server version information
--debug	Run in debug mode (verbose logging)

Agent / Non-Interactive Use

When called without a TTY (e.g., by an AI agent or piped into another command), kapela-cli adjusts its behavior:

• No subcommand: prints help and exits 0 (instead of launching the TUI)
• Results to stdout, progress/errors to stderr
• No ANSI codes or interactive prompts
• ask output truncated to 50000 bytes by default; full response saved to a temp file. Use --max-output 0 to disable.

Configuration

If a human has already run kapela-cli chat (which includes first-time setup), the CLI works out of the box — no additional setup needed. Environment variables can override the config file or serve as an alternative when no config file exists:

export KAPELA_SERVER_URL="https://your-kapela-server.com"
export KAPELA_PAT="your-pat"

Exit Codes

Code	Name	When
0	Success	Command completed
1	General	Unknown error
2	BadRequest	Invalid arguments
3	NotConfigured	Missing config/PAT
4	AuthFailure	Invalid PAT (401/403)
5	Unreachable	Server unreachable
6	RateLimited	Server returned 429
7	Timeout	Request timed out
8	ServerError	Server returned 5xx
9	NotAvailable	Feature/endpoint doesn't exist

Skill File

Install the bundled SKILL.md so AI coding agents can discover the CLI:

kapela-cli install-skill
kapela-cli install-skill --global
kapela-cli install-skill --copy
kapela-cli install-skill --agent claude-code

Flag	Description
--global, -g	Install to home directory instead of project
--copy	Copy files instead of symlinking
--agent, -a	Target specific agents (e.g. claude-code; can be repeated)

Slash Commands (in TUI)

Command	Description
/help	Show help message
/clear	Clear chat and start a new session
/agent	List and switch agents
/attach <path>	Attach a file to next message
/sessions	List recent chat sessions
/configure	Re-run connection setup
/connectors	Open connectors in browser
/settings	Open settings in browser
/quit	Exit Kapela CLI

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Action
Enter	Send message
Escape	Cancel current generation
Ctrl+O	Toggle source citations
Ctrl+D	Quit (press twice)
Scroll / Shift+Up/Down	Scroll chat history
Page Up / Page Down	Scroll half page

Building from Source

Requires Go 1.24+.

cd cli
go build -o kapela-cli .

Development

# Run tests
go test ./...

# Build
go build -o kapela-cli .

# Lint
golangci-lint run ./...

Publishing to PyPI

The CLI is distributed as a Python package via PyPI. The build system uses hatchling with manygo to cross-compile Go binaries into platform-specific wheels.

CI release (recommended)

Tag a release and push — the release-cli.yml workflow builds wheels for all platforms and publishes to PyPI automatically:

tag --prefix cli

To do this manually:

git tag cli/v0.1.0
git push origin cli/v0.1.0

The workflow builds wheels for: linux/amd64, linux/arm64, darwin/amd64, darwin/arm64, windows/amd64, windows/arm64.

Manual release

Build a wheel locally with uv. Set GOOS and GOARCH to cross-compile for other platforms (Go handles this natively — no cross-compiler needed):

# Build for current platform
uv build --wheel

# Cross-compile for a different platform
GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 uv build --wheel

# Upload to PyPI
uv publish

Versioning

Versions are derived from git tags with the cli/ prefix (e.g. cli/v0.1.0). The tag is parsed by internal/_version.py and injected into the Go binary via -ldflags at build time.