NAME
tau — your orchestrator for all dev agents, sessions, and environments.
SYNOPSIS
npm install -g @abdoknbgit/tauINFO
DESCRIPTION
your orchestrator for all dev agents, sessions, and environments.
README
The True Free Claude Code
What is Tau?
Tau is the true free Claude Code agent. It gives you a full agentic Claude Code environment - tools, MCP servers, hooks, skills, file editing, shell execution, and session control - without locking you into one paid route.
It is not a proxy and not a wrapper around someone else's wrapper. Tau has native adapters for 18 providers, built to make them work directly inside your agentic Claude Code environment. When you use Gemini, Tau speaks Gemini's API directly. Same for OpenAI, GLM, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, AgentRouter, MiniMax, and the rest.
You install it once. You type /login. You pick a provider. You work.
That's it: plug and play with one command and one login flow. No shell configuration. No export statements. No environment variable archaeology. A first-run wizard handles credentials and saves them. Cross-platform — Windows, macOS, Linux.
Why does this exist?
Because Anthropic rate limits are real, and sometimes you just want to say hi to your terminal without getting a 429 back.
Tau lets you swap providers mid-session. Anthropic giving you the cold shoulder? Switch to Kimi K2.6. Still need the agent loop, the file editing, the bash execution, the MCP servers, the hooks? You have all of it. Nothing changes except who's doing the thinking.
And here's the part that actually matters: you can work with any provider - Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, Cline, Cursor, KiloCode, Kiro, GitHub Copilot - without any of them installed on your machine. Not downloaded, not configured, not even present. Tau brings the runtime. You bring the auth most of them or API key.
That's the point. Same experience. Different brain. Zero dependencies on the original tool.
Install
npm install -g @abdoknbgit/tau
Requirements: Node.js >= 20.0.0, Git, Bash, gh for GitHub automation
Launch
tau
Launch with skip permission mode:
tau --dangerously-skip-permissions
Update
tau update
Auth
/login - Start here
Pick a provider, enter your credentials, and Tau saves the setup. No env variables, no config hunt.
Models
/models - Pick your model
Live model browser. Fetches the real catalog from your provider API, lets you search, filter, and set the active model.
/models open the full picker
/models <query> search active provider
/models openrouter:kimi search a specific provider
/model kimi-k2-5 set a model directly
Voice
/hey - Start a voice conversation
Turns on voice conversation mode. Hold Space to talk, release to send, and Tau shows what it heard before submitting.
/bye - End the voice conversation
Turns voice conversation mode off and stops any spoken reply that is still playing.
Session
/tree - Navigate the session graph
Move through your conversation history like nodes, so branches and forks stay understandable.
/clone - Clone the session
Create a copy of the current session when you want a backup or a clean duplicate to continue from.
/branch - Open a fork
Start a fork from the current point in the session without losing the original path.
/resume - Continue later
Resume the last useful session or pick an older one when you want to continue where you left off.
Monitoring and Reporting
/usage - Watch provider usage
Shows real streaming provider usage as it happens, so you can see provider consumption while working.
/statistics - Review the current session
Shows statistics for the active session, including session activity and tool-call details.
/report - Generate a final report
Creates a clean content report for the session in Markdown, PDF, or HTML. This is for readable session quality, not usage statistics.
Features
/fallback - Recover automatically
Automatic recovery when a model fails mid-session. Configure a fallback and keep working through provider outages.
/dangerously-skip-permissions - Skip permission prompts in a trusted sandbox
Session-only Bypass Permissions mode. Tau shows a warning before enabling it, permission prompts include the same session option, and /dangerously-skip-permissions off returns to Default mode.
Launch Tau directly in this mode:
tau --dangerously-skip-permissions
/whatsapp - Remote control Tau from WhatsApp
Link WhatsApp and control Tau from your phone.
/github - GitHub automation (gh required)
GitHub workflows inside Tau, powered by the GitHub CLI.
issue- Inspect issues for the current repo, or pass an issue URL to inspect that issue.pr- Inspect pull requests (repo-local or via PR URL) and generate gh-backed actions.wrap- Stage → commit → (optional changelog) → push, with one permission gate before network writes.changelog- Generate/update changelog notes from commit history in a consistent style.triage- Classify issues (labels/status) with explicit confirmation before visible changes.release- Release flow: inspect dirty working tree, check CI/CD workflow status, then tag/publish and list runs.
/safetest - Run a file inside a disposable cloud sandbox
Upload one file to a fresh E2B VM, run it there, get a clean report back. The local machine never executes anything. Each run gets its own throwaway sandbox that's destroyed at the end.
Setup is one step: /login → E2B Security → pick "Auth login" (opens the E2B dashboard in your browser) or "API key" (just paste). After that, /safetest is ready — no env variables, no extra config.
/pin - Pin a constraint to every prompt
Save a sentence (or two) and Tau quietly appends it to the end of every message you send — a persistent reminder the model carries through the whole session without you retyping it. Use it for style rules ("reply in French"), guardrails ("never edit files outside src/"), or task focus ("stay on the auth refactor"). Cache-safe by design: only the dynamic tail of the user message changes, so your provider's prompt cache stays warm and the cost is a few extra tokens per turn.
Supported Providers
| Provider | Notes |
|---|---|
| Anthropic | No comment |
| OpenAI | Best in class, but GPT-5.5 is paywalled behind Plus/Pro |
| Google Gemini | Use your own account — some server configs block certain regions-currently gemini servers are not working and giving some error 429 u can check here https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues |
| Antigravity | Saving lives from agent server overload errors |
| OpenRouter | Would use this full-time if the bills didn't care |
| Moonshot AI | Direct Kimi models through Moonshot's OpenAI-compatible API, including Kimi K2.6 for coding work |
| MiniMax AI | Direct MiniMax M2 models through MiniMax's OpenAI-compatible API, with saved API-key login, live model browsing, and Token Plan usage checks |
| NVIDIA NIM | Gets slow under server load, especially for newest models like Kimi K2 |
| DeepSeek | Solid |
| GLM / BigModel | Works with your BigModel plan or the small amount of free credit they give you |
| Ollama | Local and private, but you knew that already |
| Cline | Moonshot AI's Kimi K2.6 through here is still the big win. Note: the old free tier is no longer fully free, but you still get some free credit |
| GitHub Copilot | Recommended for enterprise plans; free models are also usable for lighter work |
| Cursor | Peak performance on Plan mode |
| KiloCode | Lots of free models and decent to try for low-cost side tasks |
| Kiro | Best performance/cost provider with large free credit |
| AgentRouter | Includes free $125 usage. Latency is server-side, and the API still has issues. claude_haiku is currently the only model I made work well. For AgentRouter only, Windows is currently supported; Linux and macOS support is being worked on |
Features
Multi-provider, natively 18 providers with native adapters. Not a routing layer, not a translation proxy — each provider speaks its own API through its own adapter. Full streaming, rate-limit handling, and automatic tool schema sanitization per provider.
The full agent loop File editing, bash execution, glob, grep, web search, web fetch, MCP servers, hooks (PreToolUse, PostToolUse, UserPromptSubmit, Stop, Notification), skills (/commit, /review-pr, /simplify), and task management — all present, all working across every provider.
Voice conversation
Use /hey to start a voice conversation and /bye to end it. Tau can listen, transcribe what you said, send it as your prompt, and optionally speak replies back.
WhatsApp remote control
Use /whatsapp to link WhatsApp and remotely control Tau from your phone.
GitHub automation and repo management
The /github command brings common GitHub work into Tau through gh: inspect issues and pull requests, review repo state, triage labels/status, generate changelog notes, run wrap-up flows for stage/commit/push, and inspect workflow or release status before publishing changes.
Scalable context across providers Tau adapts context windows when switching between models and providers, so larger-context models can carry more history while smaller-context models stay usable.
Fallback recovery A configurable fallback system can move work to another model/provider when the current one fails or overloads.
Session management and flexibility Tree navigation, cloning, branching, and resume commands make long sessions easier to control without losing context.
High-visibility monitoring and reporting Tau separates live usage, session statistics, and final reports, so you can monitor consumption while still producing readable end-of-session summaries.
Coming Soon
/surf - Intelligent model routing. Tau reads the task and routes to the best available model automatically. Experimental, in progress.
tau-vscode - VS Code extension. Provider switching from the command palette, Control Center webview, and project-aware session launch. In progress.
License
MIT