Kimi CLI (Archived)

Kimi Code CLI | Migration Guide | 迁移指南 | Legacy Docs

Migrate to Kimi Code CLI

Install Kimi Code CLI:

# macOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://code.kimi.com/kimi-code/install.sh | bash

# Windows (PowerShell)
irm https://code.kimi.com/kimi-code/install.ps1 | iex

Also available via Homebrew (brew install kimi-code) and npm (npm install -g @moonshot-ai/kimi-code).

Open a new terminal and run kimi. On first launch, it detects your Kimi CLI data in ~/.kimi/ and offers to migrate your config, MCP servers, input history, and sessions. You can also run kimi migrate at any time. Your original data in ~/.kimi/ is never modified or deleted.
Run /login again, and re-authorize your MCP servers. Login credentials, MCP authorizations, and Kimi CLI plugins are not migrated.
Uninstall the legacy CLI after migrating, e.g. uv tool uninstall kimi-cli or brew uninstall kimi-cli.

See the full migration guide for details.

Packages in this repository

All packages below are archived together with this repository. Published versions remain on PyPI, but will not receive any further updates.

Package	Status
`kimi-cli`	Archived. Replaced by Kimi Code CLI
`kimi-code` on PyPI	Archived. A legacy alias of `kimi-cli`, not the new Kimi Code CLI
`kosong`	Archived
`pykaos`	Archived
`kimi-sdk`	Archived

License

The source code remains available under the Apache License 2.0.

Thank you to everyone who used Kimi CLI, reported issues, and contributed code. Your feedback shaped Kimi Code CLI.

Original README (legacy, for reference only)

Kimi CLI is an AI agent that runs in the terminal, helping you complete software development tasks and terminal operations. It can read and edit code, execute shell commands, search and fetch web pages, and autonomously plan and adjust actions during execution.

Getting Started

See Getting Started for how to install and start using Kimi CLI.

Key Features

Shell command mode

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

VS Code extension

Kimi CLI can be integrated with Visual Studio Code via the Kimi Code VS Code Extension.

VS Code Extension

IDE integration via ACP

Kimi CLI supports Agent Client Protocol out of the box. You can use it together with any ACP-compatible editor or IDE.

To use Kimi CLI with ACP clients, make sure to run Kimi CLI in the terminal and send /login to complete the login first. Then, you can configure your ACP client to start Kimi CLI as an ACP agent server with command kimi acp.

For example, to use Kimi CLI with Zed or JetBrains, add the following configuration to your ~/.config/zed/settings.json or ~/.jetbrains/acp.json file:

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

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

Zsh integration

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

Install the zsh-kimi-cli plugin via:

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

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.

MCP support

Kimi CLI supports MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools.

kimi mcp sub-command group

You can manage MCP servers with kimi mcp sub-command group. For example:

# Add streamable HTTP server:
kimi mcp add --transport http context7 https://mcp.context7.com/mcp --header "CONTEXT7_API_KEY: ctx7sk-your-key"

# Add streamable HTTP server with OAuth authorization:
kimi mcp add --transport http --auth oauth linear https://mcp.linear.app/mcp

# Add stdio server:
kimi mcp add --transport stdio chrome-devtools -- npx chrome-devtools-mcp@latest

# List added MCP servers:
kimi mcp list

# Remove an MCP server:
kimi mcp remove chrome-devtools

# Authorize an MCP server:
kimi mcp auth linear

Ad-hoc MCP configuration

Kimi CLI also supports ad-hoc MCP server configuration via CLI option.

Given an MCP config file in the well-known MCP config format like the following:

{
  "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

See more features in the Documentation.

Development

To develop Kimi CLI, run:

git clone https://github.com/MoonshotAI/kimi-cli.git
cd kimi-cli

make prepare  # prepare the development environment

Then you can start working on Kimi CLI.

Refer to the following commands after you make changes:

uv run kimi  # run Kimi CLI

make format  # format code
make check  # run linting and type checking
make test  # run tests
make test-kimi-cli  # run Kimi CLI tests only
make test-kosong  # run kosong tests only
make test-pykaos  # run pykaos tests only
make build-web  # build the web UI and sync it into the package (requires Node.js/npm)
make build  # build python packages
make build-bin  # build standalone binary
make help  # show all make targets

Note: make build and make build-bin automatically run make build-web to embed the web UI.

Release files for kimi-cli 1.51.0

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for kimi-cli 1.51.0
File	Size	Uploaded
kimi_cli-1.51.0.tar.gz	5.3 MB	Sep 21, 2026	Details

Built distribution (wheel)

Table of built distributions (wheels) for kimi-cli 1.51.0
File	Interpreter	ABI	Platform	Reset
kimi_cli-1.51.0-py3-none-any.whl 5.6 MB Sep 21, 2026	Python 3	none	any	Details

Total release size: 10.9 MB

Release files / kimi_cli-1.51.0.tar.gz

Download URL	kimi_cli-1.51.0.tar.gz
Size	5.3 MB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`d4caee0fe4b91beebdc38ade7241f43ab981b5478d82302a950419db6ec3b4ba`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`f737ee4915b2003a130a97bdea05a30998bb6cb49a84d00805a5e06d9a9311a2`
Upload date	Sep 21, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.13.14`

Release files / kimi_cli-1.51.0-py3-none-any.whl

Download URL	kimi_cli-1.51.0-py3-none-any.whl
Size	5.6 MB
Tags	Python 3
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`ffb9d0d4725844d36d6c78e8d3914a96b2d6a17678c217f3abe7336fb7e02d0e`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`5e2822019f7d6c3400ab5de8d2dd00cf160235e6ae111faf984730bd6dc2c991`
Upload date	Sep 21, 2026
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.13.14`