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Chord

Chord

Calm AI coding in your terminal — stable long sessions, model setups you can swap at runtime, and remote operation when you cannot be at the keyboard.
Quickstart GitHub

Why Chord

Stable for the long haul

Chord can summarize earlier turns before a long conversation gets too large for the model, while preserving the information needed to continue.

You see the network state

Precise request status and elapsed wait time during model calls. Never wonder if it’s stuck again.

Keyboard-first, Vim-style

Insert / Normal modes, message search, full Vim-flavoured navigation, automatic input-method switching. Quitting takes two taps.

Hot-swap model setups

Group models into reusable pools (fast, thinking, cheap) and switch them at runtime via /models or Ctrl+P. The runtime falls back through the ordered list automatically.

Extremely lightweight

Low memory and CPU footprint. macOS power-aware: prevents idle sleep while work is active, lets the system sleep again when idle.

Drive it remotely

chord headless exposes a stdio JSON control plane; pair with chord-gateway to operate Chord from any chat surface — even from your phone when you are away.

Import existing sessions

Migrate from Claude Code, Codex, or OpenCode with a single command. Import turns and tool history are converted automatically — resume where you left off without losing context.

Three-step setup

1. Install

If you already have Go 1.26+ installed:

Terminal window
go install github.com/keakon/chord/cmd/chord@latest

If not, download a prebuilt binary from GitHub Releases, extract it, and put chord on your PATH.

2. Run setup once

Run chord in an interactive terminal:

Terminal window
chord

If config.yaml is missing, Chord launches a one-time setup wizard. The wizard creates the minimal config.yaml and, when needed, auth.yaml.

Prefer to write YAML manually or need a different provider/model setup? See Quickstart.

3. Run from your project

Terminal window
cd my-project
chord

On first run in a project, Chord creates .chord/ as needed.

Where to next

CLI reference

Every command, subcommand, and flag — including chord cleanup, worktrees, and headless. Open →

Configuration & Auth

Provider, model pool, LSP, MCP, hooks — full schema in one cheatsheet. Open →

Examples

Copy-paste-ready config.yaml for the four most common setups. Open →

Headless integration

Build bots, gateways, or scripts on top of Chord. Open →