BYF (Be Your Friend)

An AI coding agent that runs in your terminal

BYF is a terminal-first coding agent for exploring repositories, editing files, running shell commands, and helping with day-to-day development work. It is an independent project focused on local workflows, GitHub-native distribution, and user-controlled configuration.

Installation

npm (recommended)

npm install -g @byfriends/cli

Quick install (macOS/Linux)

curl -fsSL https://github.com/ByronFinn/byf/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash

Quick install (Windows)

irm https://github.com/ByronFinn/byf/releases/latest/download/install.ps1 | iex

Usage

Start BYF in the current project:

cd your-project
byf

You can also start with an inline prompt:

byf "Explain the main directories in this repository"

BYF can inspect code, edit files, run shell commands, and help you iterate on development tasks from the terminal.

Configuration

BYF stores its user config at ~/.byf/config.toml.

Set BYF_HOME to move BYF's home directory to a custom location:

export BYF_HOME="$HOME/.config/byf"

Use your own provider credentials or API key in your local configuration, and keep secrets out of your repository.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development workflow and contribution guidelines.

License

BYF is distributed under the proprietary BYF license.