Zone

A coding agent that's actually yours. Self-host, BYOK, open source — Claude Code / Cursor capability on real tasks, with no caps and full cost transparency. Your code and your key never leave your machine.

zonecli.dev · GitHub · feedback@zonecli.dev

Not another subscription

Subscription agents (Cursor, Codex, Claude Code) hide your usage behind rate limits and a flat monthly price. Zone runs on your own API key — so you pay per token, never get throttled, and see the real cost of every task.

Zone	Subscription agents
Your key, direct to the API	Locked to one vendor's plan
No caps — never blocked mid-session	Rate-limited (5-hour rolling windows)
Every cent visible, per task	Usage hidden behind a flat price
Runs on your machine	Their cloud
Open source (AGPL-3.0)	Closed

Quick start

# 1 — install
npm install -g zone-ai-agent

# 2 — add your API key
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...   # or OPENAI_API_KEY
# or use /keys inside zone

# 3 — run, from any repo
cd ~/your-project && zone

Press Shift+Tab for plan mode. You can also add and manage keys from inside the TUI with /keys — no .env needed for personal use.

Contributing / running from source

git clone https://github.com/BedreddinErkan/zone && cd zone
npm install && npm run build && npm link

Windows

Zone runs via WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). Install WSL 2 with a Linux distribution, then run zone from within the WSL terminal.

How it works

1. Describe a task. In plan mode, Zone drafts a step-by-step plan and waits — you approve, refine, or give feedback before it touches a file.
2. It works. It reads your code, makes AST-validated edits, and runs commands behind a safety layer — reading the output and fixing its own mistakes until the task is done.
3. You see the cost. Tier-aware model routing and prompt caching keep it cheap; every run ends with exact tokens, time, model, and dollars.

Features

• BYOK — Anthropic + OpenAI, your keys, direct.
• No caps — pay per token, never throttled.
• Cost telemetry — real dollars on every run.
• Plan mode — a read-only investigation (reads files, searches, runs build / test / typecheck) finds the real root cause and shows a plan before it edits. Approve, refine, or reject.
• Atomic safety — patches stage in memory, typecheck on the staged tree, flush all-or-nothing, and auto-rollback on failure. Your working tree never enters a half-broken state.
• Sessions — resume any run where you left off (--resume).
• Model routing — the right model per task; switch any time with /model.
• Self-hosted & open — AGPL-3.0, inspect everything. No telemetry, no vendor dependency beyond your LLM provider.
• @file context injection — type @path in the composer to inline a file's contents into the task; tab-complete shows matching repo files.
• /image — attach a local image (jpeg/png/gif/webp) for vision-capable models with /image <path>.
• /undo — snapshot-based revert of the last run's file changes; shows a drift warning if files were edited since.
• Web fetch — the agent can fetch a URL via fetch_url; SSRF-guarded, streaming-capped, re-validates redirects.
• User hooks — .zone/hooks.json defines PreToolUse veto rules and PostToolUse side-effects; home-dir content-hash trust gate.
• MCP client — .zone/mcp.json configures stdio MCP servers; their tools register as mcp__<server>__<tool> and are available to the agent automatically.

Slash commands

Command	What it does
/help	Show key bindings and commands
/exit	Exit zone
/clear	Clear transcript
/cost	Show session cost
/permissions	View and remove trusted command prefixes
/keys	Manage API keys (BYOK)
/sessions	Browse and resume past sessions
/init	Scaffold .zone/memory.md by analyzing repo
/memory	Show .zone/memory.md
/model	Choose AI model
/effort	Set reasoning effort (model-dependent: low → max)
/summary	Set summary format (compact/detailed)
/plan-mode	Set plan depth (quick/investigate)
/session	Toggle session memory (off/on)
/metrics	View run telemetry KPIs
/limits	Set daily USD cap
/commit	Commit last run's changes with scoped git commit
/autocommit	Toggle auto-commit after each run (off/on)
/websearch	Toggle web search (off/on)
/image	Attach a local image file to the next task (/image <path>)
/undo	Undo the last run (restore files to pre-run state)
/feedback	Send a bug report / feedback to the maintainer

Cost

Stop guessing what your coding agent costs. Every task shows its real cost, and you only pay for what you use — for most developers, far less than a Max plan.

Real Zone runs: a small edit costs as little as $0.02; a full Astro site scaffold costs $0.09; a typical cached feature or refactor runs $0.20–0.50; large multi-file refactors top out around $0.90. At ~5 sessions/day and ~$0.30/session, that's roughly $45/mo in API spend.

Anthropic rates (Jun 2026): Sonnet 4.6 $3 / $15 per MTok · Opus 4.8 $5 / $25 · cache-hit input $0.30 (−90%). Prompt caching is on by default, so multi-iteration runs get cheaper per turn, not more expensive.

Consumer Claude plans don't include API access, and Claude Code under a plan is rate-limited. Zone is BYOK on the provider API — /metrics shows real history from your own runs.

Run /cost or /metrics in-session for exact per-run figures; full cost logs live in ~/.zone/cost-logs/.

Configuration

Keys can be set entirely through /keys at runtime — no .env file required for personal use. For headless or scripted setups:

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...        # at least one provider key
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

ZONE_ENABLE_MESSAGE_CACHE=1         # Anthropic prompt caching (default on)
ZONE_VERBOSE_LOGS=0                 # 1 for diagnostic output
ZONE_DAILY_USD_CAP=10               # per-user daily spend cap (USD); 0 = unlimited
ZONE_ORG_POLICY_PATH=...            # org-level policy file (JSON)
ZONE_EXPERIMENTAL_SYNTAX_CHECKERS=  # CSV of experimental checker ids (e.g. "go,ruby,java")

Experimental syntax checkers

Zone validates patched files inline before writing them to disk. TypeScript and Python are first-class (always active). Go, Ruby, and Java are experimental and opt-in via ZONE_EXPERIMENTAL_SYNTAX_CHECKERS. Each uses a graceful skip — if the binary isn't on PATH, Zone approves the patch rather than blocking. (Rust is omitted; use run_command: cargo check instead.)

Self-host requirements

• Node.js 22+
• npm 10+
• ~/.zone/ directory (auto-created on first launch)

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later. Free for personal use, modification, and distribution. Forks must release their source under the same terms; closed-source SaaS forks are not permitted.

If Zone saves you money, you can sponsor its development.

Built by

Bedreddin Erkan (@BedreddinErkan) — solo dev. Built with TypeScript, Node.js, Ink, and the OpenAI / Anthropic SDKs. Inspired by Cursor; frustrated by SaaS lock-in. feedback@zonecli.dev