README
¶
🐒 monkey CLI
A Go CLI/TUI for chatting with Claude (Anthropic's LLM API). Run it without arguments for a full interactive terminal interface, or pass a prompt for quick one-shot output.
Features
- Interactive TUI — full-screen chat built with Bubble Tea, with markdown rendering and conversation history
- One-shot CLI — pipe-friendly:
monkey -p "summarise this" < file.txt - Agentic tool use — the model can read, write, edit, search, and run bash commands on your behalf, with per-call approval prompts
- Session persistence — resume your last conversation with
--continue - Model switching — cycle between Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku at runtime with
/model - Conversation compaction — compress long histories with
/compactto save tokens - Custom system prompts — drop a
MONKEY.mdin your project root or~/.config/monkey/MONKEY.md
Installation
One-liner
curl -fsSL https://monkeycli.com/install.sh | sh
From source
git clone https://github.com/juanhuttemann/monkey-cli.git
cd monkey-cli
go build -o monkey .
go install
go install github.com/juanhuttemann/monkey-cli@latest
Note: Requires Go 1.25 or later.
Setup
Set your Anthropic API key and at least one model:
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="your-api-key"
export ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL="claude-opus-4-5"
All environment variables:
| Variable | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY |
✅ | Your Anthropic API key |
ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL |
no | Override the API base URL (default: https://api.anthropic.com) |
ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL |
one required | Opus model ID |
ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL |
one required | Sonnet model ID |
ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL |
one required | Haiku model ID |
The default active model is the first one set, in order: Opus → Sonnet → Haiku.
Usage
Interactive TUI
monkey
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
Ctrl+Enter |
Send message |
Esc / Ctrl+C |
Quit |
/model + Ctrl+Enter |
Open model picker |
/clear |
Start a new session |
/compact |
Summarise and compress history |
/copy |
Copy last response to clipboard |
/ape |
Toggle auto-approve mode (skip tool confirmations) |
/exit |
Quit |
One-shot CLI
monkey -p "Why do monkeys make the best programmers?"
# Unquoted multi-word prompts also work
monkey -p Write a haiku about bananas
# Resume the last saved session
monkey --continue
System prompt
Create a MONKEY.md in your working directory (or ~/.config/monkey/MONKEY.md for a global default) and monkey will include it as the system prompt for every conversation.
Agentic tools
When the model needs to perform actions, it calls built-in tools. Each call shows a confirmation dialog unless /ape mode is active.
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
bash |
Run a shell command |
read |
Read a file |
write |
Create or overwrite a file |
edit |
Make targeted edits to a file |
glob |
Find files by pattern |
grep |
Search file contents |
web_search |
Search the web via DuckDuckGo |
web_fetch |
Fetch and extract text from a URL |
Running tests
go test ./...
Contributing
Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue first to discuss what you'd like to change. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.
License
MIT © Juan Huttemann
Documentation
¶
There is no documentation for this package.
Source Files
Directories
¶
| Path | Synopsis |
|---|---|
|
Package api handles LLM API communication
|
Package api handles LLM API communication |
|
Package config handles application configuration from environment variables
|
Package config handles application configuration from environment variables |
|
Package tui provides the Terminal User Interface for monkey
|
Package tui provides the Terminal User Interface for monkey |