Seed Code CLI

Jump to: What you get · Installation · First run · Providers · How a task runs · Commands · Permissions · Config · Internet · Build · Artifacts · Troubleshooting · Security · License

Seed Code is a premium terminal-based AI coding agent that runs directly inside your terminal. One unified agent — not a chat bot with a mode switch — reads your project, plans the work, writes and edits real files, runs real commands, reads their output, searches the web for documentation, fixes what fails, and reports honestly on what it actually did.

seedcode --version → Seed Code CLI 9.3.2

What you get

• One unified agent. There are no Chat/Agent/Code modes: every request is one agent turn. The engine decides from the request itself (conversation, research, coding) which tools it needs, so a question does not read your project and a coding task does not fetch the web unless it must.

• Real tools, not descriptions. The agent acts through a registry of 27 tools with strict schemas: read_file, write_file, create_file, edit_file, append_file, insert_in_file, delete_file, rename_file, move_file, copy_file, list_dir/list_directory, create_directory, delete_directory, project_index, find_files/search_files, search_text/search_content, run_command (foreground or background), run_tests, get_command_output, check_exit_code, inspect_process, git, web_search and web_fetch. Every call performs the real operation and its real result is returned to the model.

• A live, honest execution view. While the agent works you see the actual operation and the actual tool results — never a fabricated progress bar:

  You > read README.md
  
    ℹ Analyzing the task and inspecting the workspace...
    ⚙ Reading README.md
    ✓ Read README.md
    ⚙ Running python -m pytest -q
    ✓ Tests passed · Exit code: 0
    ⚙ Searching the web for 'python fastapi docs'
    ✓ Searched online for 'python fastapi docs'
    ⚙ Editing app.py
    ✓ Updated app.py — +12/-5 lines (lines 1–18)
      @@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
       import sys
      -print("old")
      +print("new")
  

  Activity lines carry no AI > prefix: they are indented under your turn, with a marker for the real state — ⚙ started, ✓ succeeded, ✗ failed, ℹ informational. User input keeps its You > label.

• A real thinking indicator. A small animated spinner sits beside the current operation with a live elapsed timer, e.g. ⠹ Reading README.md…… · 12s. The label is read from backend state (state.operation), so it says what the agent is doing, not just "Working".

• A minimal thinking strip for models that expose a reasoning channel (Ollama models with the thinking capability, and cloud providers that relay reasoning deltas). It is just a small dim Thinking... label plus the reasoning the model itself exposes, directly above the input — never invented, never mixed with the response, hidden entirely when there is nothing to show. Height is compact and bounded, auto-scroll follows the stream unless you scroll up manually, and completed reasoning is preserved after the turn (toggle with Ctrl+B). No model/provider metadata is shown; a provider that exposes no reasoning records the honest line Reasoning stream unavailable for this model.

• A right-side task plan panel. The agent's TODO list renders live on the right (○ pending, ● in progress, ✓ done, ✗ failed, ↻ retrying) and is driven only by real orchestrator task events — the current task is highlighted and progress is shown as N / M completed.

• Real file operations and diffs. File reads, creations, updates and deletions are reported with the path, the line counts, the affected line range and a bounded unified-diff preview; Ctrl+E expands the last diff.

• Real terminal execution. Commands show the command, the working directory, live output, the exit code and the duration; Ctrl+T expands the last command's full output. Windows PowerShell and POSIX shells both work.

• Real internet research. When a task needs current documentation the agent searches keyless and reads the pages it found; the search query, the source URL and the retrieved information are surfaced as real events.

• A final report that matches reality. When the turn ends you get a report of the files created/modified/deleted, commands run, tests run and their results — built only from operations that really happened.

• Permissions that are asked, not assumed. Dangerous actions (shell commands, deletes, git mutations, writes outside the workspace) ask first: Allow once / Always (session) / Allow All (session) / Deny. Grants live for the session only and are never written to disk.

• Providers and models. Default (built in, no key), OpenRouter, FreeModel Claude, FreeModel Codex, AeroLink and Ollama (started automatically when you select it). Custom OpenAI-compatible providers can be added without limit, each with its own name, base URL, key and model. Selecting a provider never copies another provider's key or model, and a failed request is reported rather than silently rerouted (automatic failover is opt-in).

• Compact, responsive header. A two-row bar — branding, provider, model and mode on the first row; live status, workspace, context budget and the masked key on the second — that never clips at any terminal width.

Installation

After any installation method, seedcode is the primary command:

seedcode

pip (any platform)

pip install seedcode-cli

Requires Python 3.10 or newer. The wheel exposes the seedcode console script; python -m seedcode also works as a developer fallback.

Windows — remote installer (recommended)

PowerShell 5.1 or newer:

irm https://seedcode-cli.vercel.app/install.ps1 | iex

Installs for the current user (no administrator rights, no Python) into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\SeedCode, adds seedcode to your user PATH, creates Desktop and Start Menu shortcuts (seedcode --install-shortcuts recreates them at any time; -NoShortcuts skips them), and verifies the installed binary reports exactly the requested version. It downloads the official SeedCode-CLI-9.3.2-windows-x64.exe and the release's SHA256SUMS.txt, and refuses to install if the checksum entry is missing, the checksum file is unreachable, or the digest does not match.

Windows — Setup installer

Download SeedCode-CLI-Setup-9.3.2.exe from the Releases page and run it. The wizard installs Seed Code, adds it to PATH, creates a Start Menu shortcut, creates a Desktop shortcut (checked by default), verifies that the installed seedcode.exe reports the installer's own version, and ships an uninstaller that never deletes your project data silently.

Windows — portable executable

Download SeedCode-CLI-9.3.2-windows-x64.exe and run it directly. It is fully self-contained (no Python, no installation, no PATH changes).

Linux / macOS — remote installer

curl -fsSL https://seedcode-cli.vercel.app/install.sh | bash

Installs for the current user and verifies the downloaded artifact against the release's SHA256SUMS.txt before anything is installed. This release publishes no prebuilt Linux/macOS binary, so the installer uses the official Python wheel (requires Python 3.10+ with pip, or pipx when available).

From source (development)

git clone https://github.com/Alshahriar-07/seedcode-cli.git
cd seedcode-cli
python -m pip install -e ".[dev]"
seedcode

After installing by any route:

seedcode --version    # -> Seed Code CLI 9.3.2

seedcode not recognized? Open a new terminal. PATH changes only apply to fresh sessions; the installers verify this before they finish.

First run

On first launch Seed Code asks where it may work:

  Select Workspace
  --------------------------------------------------------------
  Where should Seed Code work? It reads, writes, indexes and runs
  commands only inside the folder you pick.

    1  Current Folder    D:\Projects\my-site
    2  Choose a Folder   browse this PC and pick any directory

  Select [1] >

Current Folder keeps the directory you launched from; Choose a Folder opens your operating system's native folder picker. The chosen directory becomes the workspace — the single root for file reads and writes, project indexing, .seedcode project memory, terminal commands and verification. Nothing outside it is touched without permission.

Automation is never blocked: SEEDCODE_WORKSPACE=<dir> selects the workspace directly, and SEEDCODE_NO_WORKSPACE_PROMPT=1 (or a non-interactive host) keeps the launch directory.

You then land in the persistent interface:

Seed Code CLI v9.3.2 · Ollama · qwen3:4b · Agent
● Ready · Workspace D:\Projects\demo · Context 16,384 tokens

You > read README.md

  ℹ Analyzing the task and inspecting the workspace...
  ⚙ Reading README.md
  ✓ Read README.md
  ⠹ Inspecting project structure...  · 4s

╭─ Message ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ › read README.md                                                           │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
  Enter ↵ send  ·  Shift+Enter newline  ·  / commands  ·  Ctrl+C cancel

The header is fixed: it never scrolls away and every value updates in place the moment it changes. Only the conversation scrolls; the composer stays at the bottom.

Composer and keys

The composer is a real bounded multiline editor with no prefix of its own — the message you type is exactly the message that is sent.

Set SEEDCODE_NO_TUI=1 (or SEEDCODE_PLAIN=1) to use the sequential console instead — piped hosts do this automatically.

Providers and models

Every provider keeps its own key and model: switching providers never copies one provider's credentials or model onto another.

Ollama

1. Install Ollama from https://ollama.com and pull a model, e.g. ollama pull qwen3:4b.
2. In Seed Code run /provider and choose Ollama, then /model and pick the model you pulled.

Models that expose a thinking channel (Seed Code reads the model's capabilities from GET /api/show) also stream that reasoning into the Thinking... strip; the request enables think only for models that report the capability, and a model without one records the honest "Reasoning stream unavailable" note instead of inventing reasoning.

If the server is not running, Seed Code starts ollama serve for you and waits for it to become reachable. The default host is http://localhost:11434. A request that fails is reported as a failure — Seed Code never silently switches to a cloud provider when you selected Ollama (automatic failover is off unless you enable auto_failover).

How a task runs

1. Your request is classified by a deterministic, model-free classifier (seedcode/core/intent.py): conversation, research or coding.
2. The engine selects tools for that intent — filesystem, terminal, git and search for coding; the web tools for research. Nothing else is offered.
3. Every tool call performs a real operation. A read reads, a write writes, a command runs in the workspace shell; the result (including its error) is returned to the model, which continues from the real output.
4. The loop continues until the task is complete or genuinely blocked — bounded so it can never spin forever, streamed so the UI never freezes, and cancellable at any moment with Ctrl+C.
5. A report is produced from the operations that actually happened: files created/modified/deleted, commands executed with exit codes, tests run and their results, and anything still incomplete.

Project memory and sessions

An active workspace gets a .seedcode/ directory with a project index, memory notes and the session checkpoint. A long task is checkpointed, so /pause followed by /resume continues from the current task instead of starting over. /session shows the live session's plan and per-task records; /memory shows the project memory.

Command reference

Every command is real and reachable; typing / at the start of a line shows them with descriptions and filters as you type.

Aliases: quit, q, menu → /exit; keys → /shortcuts; commands → /palette; search → /files; providers/custom-providers → /custom; key → /apikey; project/folder/ws → /workspace; perm → /permission.

Permissions

Seed Code uses a single hierarchical permission level:

On top of the level, dangerous actions ask for confirmation: shell commands, file deletes, git mutations and writes outside the workspace. Answers are Allow once, Always (this category, this session), Allow All (everything, this session) or Deny. Nothing is persisted; a denial is reported to the model as a real tool failure, not hidden.

Set the level with /permission workspace (or read_only, full_system).

Internet access

Research requests can search and read current sources keylessly: a DuckDuckGo HTML search, page fetching with boilerplate stripped, and a character-budgeted, URL-attributed context block. Every failure degrades to "no results" instead of crashing the turn. Set SEEDCODE_DISABLE_INTERNET=1 to turn it off for a session, and SEEDCODE_MAX_RETRIES to bound provider retries.

Configuration and local data

~/.seedcode/
├── config.json       provider and application settings
├── history/          saved conversation sessions (per provider)
├── memory/           persistent local memory
└── logs/             rotating diagnostic logs

config.json keeps one isolated entry per provider. Upgrades preserve it: your settings, keys and history live outside the install directory and are never deleted by an installer. default_api/OPENROUTER_API_KEY environment variables are honoured for the Default provider.

Environment variables: SEEDCODE_WORKSPACE, SEEDCODE_NO_WORKSPACE_PROMPT, SEEDCODE_NO_TUI, SEEDCODE_PLAIN, SEEDCODE_PROVIDER, SEEDCODE_MODEL, SEEDCODE_SHELL, SEEDCODE_DISABLE_INTERNET, SEEDCODE_MAX_RETRIES, SEEDCODE_DIRNAME, SEEDCODE_DEBUG, SEEDCODE_DISABLE_DOTENV, SEEDCODE_DOTENV, SEEDCODE_DEFAULT_API_KEY, OPENROUTER_API_KEY.

Building from source

Python distributions

python -m pip install build twine
python -m build                     # dist/seedcode_cli-9.3.2-*.whl and *.tar.gz
python -m twine check dist/*

Windows executable + installer

scripts\windows\build.bat

The pipeline runs the test suite as a release gate, builds the standalone dist\seedcode.exe with PyInstaller (icon and version resource embedded, --version verified against the source version), compiles the Inno Setup installer, and stages the release directory with real SHA-256 checksums. Requirements: Python 3.10+, PyInstaller, Inno Setup 6 or 7.

Release artifacts (v9.3.2)

Release: v9.3.2

Verify a download before using it:

sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS.txt              # Linux / macOS
Get-FileHash <file> -Algorithm SHA256    # Windows PowerShell

All release artifacts are staged in dist/release/v9.3.2/ by the build pipeline; digests are computed from the final files, never copied from an older release.

Troubleshooting

Logs live in ~/.seedcode/logs/.

Security model

• API keys are stored in your user configuration directory, never in the repo, never in shell history, and are always masked in the UI (sk-or-v1...e031).
• The workspace boundary is enforced by the permission manager, not by prompt wording: tools ask before any privileged operation.
• Release installers verify SHA-256 against the published SHA256SUMS.txt and abort on a missing entry or a mismatch; verification is never bypassed.

Credits

Built by Al Shahriar Sowan (Eagox Studio).

License

Seed Code is licensed under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0 — see LICENSE for the full terms.

In short:

Copyright © 2026 Al Shahriar Sowan · Eagox Studio. Commercial licensing or questions about the terms → open an issue or reach the author via https://github.com/Alshahriar-07.