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Overview

Gini Agent

Gini Agent is a local-first personal agent runtime for people who want an agent they can install, operate, inspect, approve, and debug.

Gini is not just a chat box, CLI, messaging bot, or pile of tools. Chat is an interaction surface. The runtime is the system of record for conversations, runs, tasks, approvals, memory, skills, jobs, tools, traces, audit events, and runtime health.

Docs

Architecture decisions

Architecture In One Sentence

Gini’s runtime is the gateway: a single Bun process per instance owns state and performs work. The Next.js web app, CLI, future mobile app, MCP surfaces, and messaging bridges are clients of the same authenticated /api/* contract. The one documented exception is gini import apply openclaw, which requires the gateway stopped and mutates state in-process; see Architecture Overview and Openclaw Migration .

                 GATEWAY (Bun runtime, one per instance)
                 state, agent loop, tools, memory, jobs
                              ^
          --------------------+--------------------
          |                    |                   |
      Next.js BFF          CLI / scripts       future clients
      browser UI           bearer token        mobile, MCP, messaging
      no browser token

What’s in the box

  • Authenticated localhost gateway and a Next.js + Tailwind + shadcn/ui control plane
  • Persistent chat, runs, tasks, approvals, traces, audit events, jobs, memories, and skills
  • Approval-gated file, terminal, and code tools
  • Provider support: Codex OAuth, OpenAI API key, OpenRouter, and any OpenAI-compatible local server
  • Local embeddings and reranking by default
  • Parallel instances with isolated state, ports, and logs

See the Whitepaper and Architecture Overview for the design.

Quick Start

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Lilac-Labs/gini-agent/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

On macOS the installer enables autostart (per-user LaunchAgents for the runtime and webapp), waits for the webapp to come up, and opens the /setup page in your browser. Pick a provider in the browser form (OpenAI API key or existing codex --login auth) and you land on the running app. The runtime stays alive across reboots and crashes until you explicitly run gini stop or gini autostart disable.

If the browser doesn’t open automatically (or you want to navigate manually), run gini status to print the actual web URL. The installed default instance always lives at :7777; other instances get hash-derived ports, so check gini status rather than guessing. The installer also prints the URL right before opening the browser.

Caveat on macOS 26 (Tahoe): after a SIGKILL, launchd sometimes refuses to auto-respawn (pended nondemand spawn = inefficient). Run gini autostart kick to force a respawn when that happens; RunAtLoad still fires at login.

If you opted out of autostart (--no-autostart) or you’re on Linux (autostart is currently macOS-only), run gini setup then gini start to launch the runtime by hand.

After install, the URLs are stable:

  • web: http://127.0.0.1:7777
  • runtime: http://127.0.0.1:7778

Update

gini update

Updates the installer-managed runtime at ~/.gini/runtime and restarts it. Per-instance state under ~/.gini/instances/ and the model cache at ~/.gini/models/ are preserved.

From source

bun install
bun run gini install
bun run gini start

From a repo clone, the instance is derived from the directory basename, so each worktree gets isolated state and ports automatically. See CONTRIBUTING.md  for development setup including ./scripts/install.sh --local for testing the install flow against a local checkout.

CLI

The CLI covers chat, runs, tasks, approvals, memory, jobs, connectors, providers, snapshots, imports, and more. Discover commands with:

gini --help

Useful starting points:

gini status        # runtime health and URLs
gini chat new      # start a chat session
gini approvals     # review pending tool approvals

(From a repo clone, prefix with bun run.)

Providers

Run gini setup for an interactive picker, or configure directly:

gini provider set codex gpt-5.5            # Codex OAuth (reads ~/.codex/auth.json)
gini provider set openai gpt-5.4-mini      # uses $OPENAI_API_KEY
gini provider set openrouter <model>       # uses $OPENROUTER_API_KEY
gini provider set local <model> --base-url http://127.0.0.1:8000/v1

The local provider works with any OpenAI-compatible server (oMLX, vLLM, LM Studio, llama.cpp). API keys are read from environment variables, and Codex OAuth is read from ~/.codex/auth.json (or CODEX_AUTH_JSON) — nothing is written to Gini config. Run gini --help for the full flag set, or see provider-extra-body.md  for the --extra-body contract.

Parallel Instances

Each instance has isolated state, ports, and logs:

gini --instance sandbox run
gini smoke                  # ephemeral instance under /tmp

Multiple agents can run smoke tests concurrently without colliding.

Local State

~/.gini/instances/<instance>/   # config, state.json, memory.db, traces, snapshots, workspace, logs
~/.gini/models/                 # shared embedding/reranker model cache

Use gini uninstall to remove an instance or the whole install. See Operations for diagnostics and cleanup.

Roadmap

See ROADMAP.md for shipped surfaces and what’s planned.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Start with CONTRIBUTING.md  for development setup, verification commands, and PR conventions. For architecture conventions and module boundaries, see AGENTS.md . Report security issues privately per SECURITY.md .

License

MIT 

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Operations