A terminal coding agent. Cymela is the wrapper; Hyper is the engine behind it.

It reads, edits and runs code on your machine, and it talks to whichever model you point it at — you bring the provider and the API key.

npm install -g cymela

Then start it in any project directory:

cymela

• Website: https://cymela.com
• Package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/cymela

Cymela is not open source. This repository holds the issue tracker, the changelog and the documentation — the application itself ships as a compiled bundle on npm, and its source is not published here. See LICENSE.

You are free to install and use Cymela, including commercially, at no cost.

• Node.js 20 or newer
• A modern terminal — Windows Terminal, iTerm2, Terminal.app, GNOME Terminal, kitty, and friends
• An API key for at least one supported provider

Windows is where Cymela is developed and gets the most real hours. macOS and Linux support is newer — everything is built and tested to work there, but if something misbehaves, an issue report is gold.

macOS note: the Alt-key shortcuts (Alt+V paste-attach, Alt+Q queue, Alt+A agents) need your terminal's "use Option as Meta/Esc+" setting turned on — it is off by default in Terminal.app and iTerm2.

No. Cymela runs on Node.js and installs from npm. pip install cymela gets you a placeholder that does nothing — the name is reserved on PyPI by us so that nobody else can publish under it. If an AI assistant told you to run pip install cymela, it invented that.

OpenRouter, OpenAI, Google (Gemini), Anthropic, Mistral, DeepSeek, Groq, SiliconFlow, Qwen, Moonshot, Zhipu and NVIDIA.

On first run Cymela asks which provider to use, for that provider's API key, and which model. Keys are stored per provider in ~/.cymela/settings.json with file mode 0600, so switching between providers does not overwrite the key you used yesterday. They are never written into the project directory.

Any working key runs Cymela; not every key runs it well. Free-tier and trial keys are usually rate-limited, and an agent fires many requests in a row — so a free key tends to stop mid-task with a 429 Too Many Requests banner. For real work we recommend a paid key, or any key without tight rate limits. When a provider does throttle or reject a key, Cymela says so in plain words and r retries the turn.

Your prompts, and whatever files Cymela reads to answer them, go to the provider you configured. There is no account, no telemetry, and no server of ours anywhere in the path — we receive nothing, including your API keys, which stay on your machine.

So the privacy of your conversations is your provider's privacy policy, not ours. Point Cymela at DeepSeek and your code goes to DeepSeek under DeepSeek's terms; the same holds for every provider. A tool that runs locally is not the same thing as a private conversation, and it is worth knowing which one you have.

Two tools reach further than your provider, and only when the model uses them:

• web-search sends your search query to DuckDuckGo and Wikipedia, or to Brave if you set BRAVE_API_KEY. The query only — never your files.
• web-fetch retrieves the URL it is given, from whoever serves it.

Nothing else leaves your machine.

• Agent modes — shift+tab cycles Default, Plan (planning only, no edits) and Auto. Plan mode is enforced mechanically, not by asking the model nicely.
• Permissions — file writes and shell commands are gated. Deny rules and hooks are configurable; hooks from a workspace you have not trusted do not run.
• Sessions — /sessions restores earlier conversations, with checkpoints you can roll back to.
• Skills and personas — /newskill and /personality extend how it works and how it writes. Custom personas are compiled and signed locally.
• Themes — /theme switches the palette. Some seasons decorate the input bar with pixel art.

/help lists everything. /shortcuts lists the key bindings.

Credentials live in your home directory, never in a project. A project settings file cannot set a provider, a key or a trusted workspace — that is deliberate, because settings files travel inside repositories.

Use Issues — pick "Bug report" or "Feature idea" when you open one. No SLA and no roadmap promise on either, but they're read.

To report a security vulnerability, follow SECURITY.md instead of opening a public issue.

Proprietary. Free to install and use, including commercially; not free to redistribute or to publish modified versions. See LICENSE and the Terms of Service.

Third-party dependencies keep their own licenses.