BabeL-O

Your terminal workspace for durable coding sessions, native TUI workflows, and tool-aware agents.
Technical support provided by KezhongKe (壳中客).

简体中文 README

What Is BabeL-O?

BabeL-O is an AI coding agent that lives in your terminal.

It gives you a native Go TUI for day-to-day work, a Nexus runtime that keeps sessions alive, and a permission-first tool system for reading, editing, running commands, searching the web, and coordinating work across sessions.

Start the production TUI with:

bbl go

Use it for repo exploration, edits, tests, long migrations, model switching, context inspection, and session-to-session handoffs without turning your terminal into a fragile one-shot chat.

Why BabeL-O?

• Multiple parallel sessions across worktrees — Work on isolated workspaces simultaneously. The background daemon holds state, so your client can disconnect and reconnect without losing tasks. (Technical: worktree isolation + session persistence + WebSocket reconnect)

• 10MB standalone binary client — bbl go is a Go TUI binary (~10MB) with no Node.js dependency. Drop it in a container and run. (Technical: Go Bubble Tea TUI + Node 22+ daemon with native SQLite)

• Completes long tasks for real — Context compaction, tool loop boundaries, permission governance, and sub-agent coordination — not a demo-level toy. (Technical: LLMCodingRuntime + TaskSession + AgentLoop + scope governance)

• Permission-first tools — Bash, Write, Edit, MCP tools, and memory writes stay visible. Approve once, approve for a session, or reject with feedback.

• Inspectable context — /context shows budget, compaction, memory, recovery, working set, and long-context diagnostics instead of hiding the agent's state.

• Session collaboration — /session, /inbox, and SessionChannel let sessions exchange findings, handoffs, decisions, and review requests without treating those messages as secret instructions.

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Quick Start (5 minutes)

⚠️ Requires Node.js >= 22. If your Node is older, upgrade first. For alternative installation methods, see INSTALLATION.md.

# Install globally
npm install -g babel-o

# Initialize with interactive setup (coming soon: bbl config init)
bbl config add anthropic "$ANTHROPIC_API_KEY"
bbl config use anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6

# Launch the terminal UI
bbl go

Then try: "Explain this repository's main entry point"

See Common Commands for more usage examples.

Installation

Recommended: npm global install

npm install -g babel-o
bbl go

Requirements: macOS or Linux, Node.js >= 22.

For alternative installation methods (release installer, from source), see INSTALLATION.md.

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TUI Keybindings

Input	Action
/	Open the command palette
/model or Ctrl+L	Configure provider, API key, base URL, and model
/session	Create, select, switch, or copy session IDs
/context	Inspect context budget and diagnostics
/tools or Ctrl+O	Open the tool panel
/memory	Inspect MemoryOS status and memory candidates
Ctrl+D	Open the top status panel
Shift+Enter	Insert a newline
Esc	Close the active panel
Ctrl+C	Open the quit dialog

Try It

explain this repository and point me to the entry points

read the failing test output, patch the bug, and rerun the smallest useful test

create a new session for release notes, then summarize the current changes

inspect the current context budget and tell me whether we should compact

Common Commands

bbl go                            # production Go TUI
bbl run "summarize this repo"     # one-shot prompt, no TUI
bbl doctor                        # local readiness checks
bbl go --check --no-start-nexus   # install and TUI readiness check
bbl nexus status                  # Nexus health
bbl sessions list                 # persisted sessions
bbl inspect-session <sessionId>  # session events and traces
bbl memory status                 # MemoryOS status
bbl tools audit                   # tool and permission audit
bbl config list                   # active configuration

MemoryOS

MemoryOS is optional local long-term memory. It runs as a managed loopback sidecar, indexes approved session knowledge, and returns memory hints when they are useful.

It is opt-in, local-first, and never replaces workspace evidence. Memory hits are hints; files and tool results remain the source of truth.

bbl memory status
bbl memory setup --yes
bbl memory enable-tools
bbl memory doctor

Configuration

BabeL-O stores local configuration in ~/.babel-o/config.json.

Supported providers include anthropic, openai, deepseek, moonshot, ollama, zhipu, minimax, and local.

Useful checks:

bbl config list
bbl doctor
bbl go --check

Safety Model

BabeL-O is built around explicit boundaries:

• Workspace path checks protect against traversal and symlink escapes.
• Risky tools require visible permission decisions.
• Tool inputs, outputs, approvals, denials, and usage events are persisted.
• SessionChannel messages are collaboration context, not hidden commands.
• MemoryOS results are hints, not authoritative workspace facts.
• Nexus is the runtime source of truth; the TUI is the interaction layer.

Architecture

For a deeper public overview of how the CLI, Go TUI, Nexus daemon, runtime, tools, agents, memory, storage, and observability layers fit together, see BabeL-O Architecture.

Release Notes

As of v0.3.7, the old bbl chat TypeScript TUI has been removed from the release package. The official interactive entrypoint is bbl go; bbl run remains available for one-shot automation.

This keeps the install smaller, removes duplicated terminal UI logic, and puts future interaction work into the native Go TUI.

Documentation

• Changelog
• Release notes
• FAQ
• Go TUI client guide
• Distribution guide
• Nexus planning notes

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.