CodeGraff

An AI agent for coding and computer work, in your terminal or desktop.

Quick start · Desktop · SDKs · Evaluations · Development

Quick start

Desktop for Mac

Apple Silicon · macOS 14+

1. Download CodeGraff.
2. Quit any running copies, open the disk image, and drag Codegraff.app to Applications.
3. Eject the disk image and open Codegraff from Applications.

The signed and notarized app includes its runtime; no developer tools or local server are needed. Verify the download checksum. For a graff command in your terminal, install the CLI below.

Terminal

On macOS or Linux:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/justrach/codegraff/releases/latest/download/install.sh | sh

graff login                     # sign in
graff                           # start an interactive session
graff -p "Explain this project"  # ask a single question

Other login options, Windows, and editor integration

graff login kimi
graff login zai
graff login codex
graff key set deepseek sk-...
graff --model grok-4.6

From a checkout: ./install.sh (binary in ~/bin; HARNESS_NO_PATH=1 skips PATH edits). Windows: unpack graff-*-windows.tar.gz from the latest release and put graff.exe on PATH.

graff acp is the Agent Client Protocol spawn (Zed External Agents). Recipe: docs/acp-registry.md.

What can it do?

Describe a task in plain English. Graff can read and edit files, run commands, use browser tools, and delegate work to sub-agents.

• Build: “Build a small app to track my workouts.”
• Investigate: “Find out why this page is slow.”
• Work with data: “Turn these CSVs into one clean spreadsheet.”
• Compare: “Try three approaches and test which works best.”

The desktop app

Chat, coordinate agents, review changes, and browse in one workspace. The desktop and terminal use the same Graff harness.

Chat and context

• Keep track of work: tabs distinguish running, finished, interrupted, and unread conversations.
• Control the next step: choose a model and effort level, or steer a queued follow-up with Cmd+Enter.
• See what fits: the composer shows remaining context and attachment previews.
• Choose an appearance: White, Black, Website, CodeGraff, or a custom theme through $gui-theme.

Agents

See who is working, send a message, hand off a task, or stop a peer. Messages arrive at the recipient’s next step. The Agents pane also shows occupancy and resource use. Read the Agents guide.

View agent occupancy and resource use

The optional profiler records anonymous resource measurements without identities or message contents.

Changes and browser

Review staged, unstaged, and untracked edits alongside the conversation. Inspect diffs, worktrees, and recent commits; resize the pane for more room. The browser supports navigation, find, zoom, and pinned page elements. Optional macOS computer use requires enabling it and granting system permissions.

View browser annotations

Pin a page element and include it in your next message. Background browser work keeps the focused chat in place.

Updates and restart

Desktop builds from v0.0.291 check for updates online and download them in the background. Choose Restart to update when your work is finished, or use Codegraff → Check for Updates…. Automatic downloads can be disabled in that menu. Earlier builds need one manual installation to enable the updater. An app update replaces the bundled Graff engine together with the interface. A CLI installed separately through Quick start has its own update lifecycle; that command downloads a CLI archive, not the notarized desktop installer.

Sessions, attachments, and integrations

• Saved sessions are snapshots; navigation stays accessible in narrow windows.
• Sent images use compact thumbnails, while drafts keep a preview.
• Closed Mermaid code blocks render as diagrams.
• Muse Spark supports pasted, dropped, and attached images.
• MCP tools can display an App UI in an isolated result frame.
• graff mcp install registers a local HTTP task service for other clients.

Images show unchanged GUI captures with scripted demonstration content. Click an image to open the original capture.

How Graff handles work

Sub-agents work in parallel with their own context. A workflow combines sequential phases of parallel children, passing results through {{prev}}. Children use a one-level tool set without nested fan-out.

Context stays focused by reusing stable setup, running small programs over working data, and carrying useful results forward. Large tool outputs become handles you can page with read_tool_result. Use /compact to shorten the transcript.

Use it from code

from harness_sdk import Harness
with Harness(yolo=True, model="gpt-5.5") as h:
    print(h.ask("what is 2+2?"))

import { runAgent } from "@codegraff/sdk";
for await (const ev of runAgent({ prompt: "summarize README.md", yolo: true })) {
  if (ev.type === "text") process.stdout.write(ev.text);
}

graff --json / graff --schema generate the SDKs (sdk/). Remote: graff serve. MCP clients can delegate small tasks with graff mcp serve. Embedders: --no-local-tools + a sandbox MCP — Embedding graff.

CLI, slash commands, providers, permissions

graff [flags]                 REPL
graff -p "prompt"             one-shot (answer on stdout)
graff login [codegraff|codex|kimi|xai|zai]
graff key set <provider> <key>
graff mcp add <name> -- <cmd>
graff learn <command>
graff --schema

--model <name>   --yolo   --json   --no-local-tools
--subagent-model <name>   --max-model-calls N

One-shot has no human at the gate: pre-approve in .harness/settings.json or pass --yolo. Full flag list: graff --help. Learning: docs/local-learning.md. Skills: docs/skills.md.

/model /models /clear /new /goal /loop /review /never
/plan /yolo /strict /effort /compact /rewind /btw
/skills /plugins /mcp /save /resume /sessions /help

Bare / is a filterable menu. Esc interrupts the turn. /help is the live catalog.

mode	what it does
default	ask before writes, MCP, and non-read-only bash
--yolo / /yolo	skip every prompt (CI, -p)
/plan	read-only explore
/strict	every message is a tool

Providers: Anthropic, OpenAI, DeepSeek, xAI, Z.AI, Kimi, Codex (ChatGPT login), Vercel, OpenRouter, MiniMax, Xiaomi, Groq, Cerebras, Mistral, plus one workspace router in .graff/.config.router. graff models refresh pulls catalogs. Claude-subscription OAuth is deliberately not supported.

OpenAI's GPT-5.6 family is gpt-5.6 (the API alias for gpt-5.6-sol), gpt-5.6-terra, and gpt-5.6-luna, on the Responses wire via openai, codex, or the Codegraff gateway. /effort takes low|medium|high|xhigh plus the family's max (shown as Ultra; medium is the default). Reasoning replays from local history, so reasoning.context is never sent (ADR 0145); reasoning.mode: "pro" is not exposed yet.

Evaluation results

The recorded live evaluation covers 12 PR tasks, with three runs per task. A task passes when at least two runs pass. See the results receipt for the recorded evidence. The live, in-house, and FrontierHarness evaluations use different protocols and should be read separately.

Recorded results and resource measurements

The recorded comparison below uses the same grok-4.6 SuperGrok seat. Live PR tasks and distilled in-house fixtures are separate evaluations. These are historical results, not a claim about every task or model.

Live 12 gated PRs (2026-09-09, n=3, pass ≥2/3). Honest list$ is the official low band on passing reps of passing tasks. SuperGrok cash is $0. Only graff-195 is G1–G6 certified. A check-green with no tokens does not count (exo’s last two turbos died in <1s). Receipt: artifacts/graff-evals-live/RECEIPT.md.

harness	tasks	reps	honest list$	mean wall
graff	12/12	35/36	$21.48	264s
Pi	12/12	35/36	$18.47	334s
OpenCode	12/12	36/36	$25.71	309s
grok	11/12	33/36	$33.69	362s
exo	9/12	25/36	$16.01	281s

Grok drops #727 (graff still 2/3). exo drops gemini-ix plus two no-token turbos.

Distilled in-house fixtures (--suite inhouse, repeatable comparison, not live):

harness	pass	wall	calls	tokens	list$	RSS
graff	12/12	220s	53	234k	$0.32	8.7M
grok-build	12/12	490s	60	1.12M	$1.07	155M
OpenCode	12/12	235s	77	675k	$0.68	1.0G

Graff is the unique frontier on pass, wall, calls, tokens, list$, and RSS in this measurement. (First-token is not scored — graff's 0.0s is a boot mark, not first model SSE. RSS is ReleaseSafe process peak.)

On the 3-task spine (exact-reply + file-ops + fix-fib) graff was 19.9s / 8 calls / $0.048 vs grok 32.3s / 8 / $0.147 and OpenCode 31.2s / 8 / $0.101.

Footprint

metric	measured
binary	~3 MB, zero runtime deps
cold start	~1.8 ms
full agentic turn	~12 MB peak RSS
8 parallel subagents	+0.4 MB each
fat tool output	one 4 KB handle, whatever the result's size

Same model, same endpoint, the older Rust codegraff used 4.3× the memory and ~14× the disk for a dead-heat turn. Method: docs/architecture.md.

How we measure it: methodology, limitations, and reproduction

Three evaluation layers, under graff-evals/. They answer different questions; none is a leaderboard claim.

Layer 0 — live gated PRs (--suite live). Sparse-checkouts the real package, pins the test that was red on the parent, holds out a follow-up the public check does not name. No SPEC.md. Score pass @ n=3. ADR 0095.

Layer 1 — the in-house runner (run.py, harnesses.json, tasks/). Every task is one JSON file: fixture files, a prompt, and a deterministic shell check that decides pass/fail inside a materialized sandbox. Held-out checks live in hidden/ and are injected through $TASK_ROOT after the harness exits, so the agent never sees them. Most harnesses take --model, so the same task set can be driven through different harnesses on one model, and each run records wall time, first-output latency, peak RSS, CPU and token usage alongside the verdict, as JSONL plus a summary table.

45 tasks in five suites — core (12, sequential single-file work), rlm (5, scatter-gather across files), swe (6, multi-file bugfixes), mcp (10, a fixture MCP bench), inhouse (12, bug shapes distilled from shipped PRs). --suite all is core+rlm+swe; mcp and inhouse are opt-in. 25 harness configurations are declared, covering this project's variants plus several other CLI agents. A task that requires a capability a harness lacks is skipped, not scored as a failure. Cost is recomputed from tokens at published list rates, because a flat-rate subscription prints $0.0000 and that is a plan, not a price.

What this layer proves: that a change moved a measured number on a fixed, deterministic task set. What it does not prove: anything about the live repo — the inhouse fixtures are distilled shapes, not the codebase.

Layer 2 — frontier-harness/. It runs the same 30 tasks as FrontierHarness Eval — 21 from Terminal-Bench 2.1 and 9 from DeepSWE — in Docker, under a protocol that is deliberately not the same bench seat (see "What these runs are not" below, and PROTOCOL.md). The board side is a pinned snapshot of the published results, not a live query. TB tasks are graded by running the public tests/test_outputs.py inside the task container after the agent exits — pass is pytest exit 0. The 9 DeepSWE tasks the upstream pack treats as having a hidden grader are scored out of band by grade_swe.py against the tests datacurve-ai/deep-swe actually ships, using the same images and the same prepare/test.sh protocol, reading the verifier's reward.json. A missing reward.json is recorded as FAIL, never inferred. A competing agent is run locally on the same images and the same tests.

What these runs are not

• Not same seat as the published board. The later recorded runs used an eval-only system-prompt append (BENCH_APPEND, passed as --append-system-prompt). It is task-shaped coaching the board's harnesses did not get. It never touched the shipped prompt in prompt_text.zig, and an appended-prompt result must not be placed next to a board result as a peer. The honest number is the un-appended first pass.
• Different model. The published board is Kimi K3; the recorded runs are mostly a different model. To compare fairly: empty BENCH_APPEND, same model, TB-21 only, and say so.
• Different runtime. The official eval restores a prepared VM. We docker run the public image and, on stripped images, add a CA bundle and install pytest so TLS and the tests can run at all. That is infrastructure, not a hint, but it is not bit-identical.
• Asymmetric cost columns. The locally run competing agent logged no token events, so its list price is missing — a telemetry gap, not zero. It is also driven through its own CLI and its own runner, so it shares the images and the tests but not the harness path. The chart refuses to place a row with no cost data on the frontier.
• Mixed-model harness rows are a different comparison. Entries that run another agent on its own native default model are not points in a same-model series, and mcp is always run in one mode because the other is a different tool catalog.
• Some recorded misses are environmental — an agent wall-clock cap, a server that did not outlive the agent process, a leftover build artifact breaking a file-layout constraint — and are written up as such in FAILURES.md. On the DeepSWE side apply_failed is not excused: it is a real failure.

Reproduce

cd graff-evals

./run.py --harness graff                       # core+rlm+swe; mcp/inhouse are opt-in
./run.py --harness graff,grok --model grok-4.6 # harness-vs-harness, same model
./run.py --harness grok --task fix-fib --reps 3
zig build && ./run.py --harness graff-dev      # the locally built binary
./run.py --interactive                         # pick a task, watch it live

Results land in results/run-<stamp>.jsonl; .sandboxes/ keeps the last run's working directories for post-mortems. Both are disposable.

cd graff-evals/frontier-harness
export FH_GRAFF_MODEL=grok-4.6   # or kimi-k3 + MOONSHOT_API_KEY

python3 fh_run.py --suite tb  -j 2 --fresh --out results.jsonl      # TB-21
python3 fh_run.py --suite swe -j 2 --out swe-results.jsonl          # DeepSWE patches
python3 grade_swe.py grok-4.6                                       # grade those patches
python3 plot_tb21.py

The competing agent has its own runner, fh_exo.py, and its own binary (EXO_BIN); fh_run.py does not drive it.

This layer is not turnkey. It needs Docker, a Linux build of the binary, the upstream task pack, the pinned terminal-bench tests and a clone of datacurve-ai/deep-swe, staged where the scripts expect them — PROTOCOL.md has the locations. Model selection is an environment variable. No credential is committed here: the metered path reads its key from the environment, and the subscription path copies an existing local credentials file into the task container.

Development

The repository is organized as follows:

path	what it is
src/, TUI/	harness + terminal
apps/	desktop (Electron) and iOS
graff-evals/	live, in-house, FrontierHarness
docs/	ADRs, architecture, images, install, embedding
sdk/	generated TypeScript / Python
scripts/	tier-1/2, PTY probes, release, desktop launch

Desktop code lives in apps/native; evaluation tooling lives in graff-evals.

scripts/install-hooks.sh          # once
scripts/eval-tier1.sh             # offline checks
python3 scripts/eval-tier2.py     # model-backed, opt-in

Tier 1 is zig fmt, the 600-line ceiling, test reachability, zig build test (suite count never shrinks), named goal/loop/todo invariants, and SDK drift. Docs-only pushes skip it. In-house PR fixtures: graff-evals/ (--suite inhouse).

Build and test the desktop from source

Build on Apple Silicon macOS 14+ with Bun, Zig, and Xcode command-line tools:

./scripts/build_and_run.sh

The development bundle starts its own local server and uses local development signing. Downloadable releases are signed and notarized.

Profile and test without a model. The Performance menu and desktop profiler tool record bounded, local measurement reports. Startup paint timing, streaming responsiveness, process resources and acceleration status are measured separately. No reports are uploaded automatically. From apps/native:

bun run build
bun run test:desktop
bun run test:visual
bun run test:performance

The visual and performance scenarios use production GUI components with scripted inputs and block engine/model API calls. See the desktop guide and visual test guide for scope and limitations.

License

Modified GNU AGPL-3.0 (LICENSE). Network use triggers Section 13. Authors Rach Pradhan (justrach) and Yu Xi Lim (yxlyx) reserve the right to offer proprietary or hosted versions. A recipient's AGPL licence is perpetual unless they breach it. Commercial permission without copyleft exists only if both authors grant it jointly in writing, and is revocable.

_{Built in Zig 0.17 dev · AGPL-3.0 (modified) · architecture · CHANGELOG · uxlog}