Official shell entrypoint for OpenProse commands. The CLI turns invocations like prose run inspector.md into canonical OpenProse agent-session prompts, then streams the selected harness output back to the terminal.

The CLI does not replace the OpenProse VM or execute programs by itself. The selected harness still runs the prompt, loads the OpenProse skill/specs, spawns agents when available, and writes run state.

Requirements

Node.js 18 or newer
Credentials for the selected provider
Codex SDK/OpenAI credentials for the default codex-sdk harness
npx, used by the CLI to install the open-prose skill when needed

Install

From npm:

npm install --global @openprose/prose-cli
prose --help

From the GitHub release tarball:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openprose/prose/main/cli/install.sh | sh

From a repository checkout:

cd cli
npm ci
npm run build
npm link
prose --help

For project-local use:

npm install --save-dev ../path/to/prose/cli
npx prose run inspector.md

The installer supports PROSE_VERSION, PROSE_BASE_URL, PROSE_INSTALL_DIR, PROSE_BIN_DIR, PROSE_SHA256, and PROSE_SHA256_URL overrides for pinned or private releases. By default it downloads and verifies the .sha256 file next to the release tarball.

Maintainers can find the release process in RELEASE.md.

Harnesses

codex-sdk uses @openai/codex-sdk, forwards the current working directory and environment, and streams Codex SDK events. This is the default.
claude-sdk uses @anthropic-ai/claude-agent-sdk, forwards the current working directory and environment, and streams text deltas.
codex runs codex exec <prompt> and streams the Codex CLI process output.
claude runs claude -p <prompt> and streams the Claude CLI process output.
mock echoes prompts for tests and local smoke checks.

Select a harness with --harness <name> or PROSE_HARNESS.

For externally sandboxed CI environments, Codex harnesses also honor PROSE_CODEX_SANDBOX_MODE (read-only, workspace-write, or danger-full-access) and PROSE_CODEX_APPROVAL_POLICY (never, on-request, on-failure, or untrusted) and forward those values to Codex.

Skill Setup

OpenProse execution depends on the open-prose agent skill. Before running a real harness, the CLI checks whether that skill is installed for the selected provider and installs the missing global skill target with:

npx --yes skills@1.5.3 add openprose/prose --skill open-prose --global --yes --copy --full-depth --agent <agent>

Automatic setup only installs the provider you selected for that run, prints a short status line on success, and only shows the full skills installer output if setup fails. Use prose doctor to inspect local skill availability without running a program:

prose doctor
prose doctor --harness claude-sdk --install

Behavior

stdout and stderr are streamed rather than buffered.
child-process harnesses preserve child exit codes.
SDK harnesses return 0 on successful final results, 1 on SDK turn errors, and 143 when aborted by the CLI.
SIGINT and SIGTERM are propagated through the active harness.
Arguments after -- are forwarded literally, including --harness.

The tarball installer is intentionally a Node.js installer: the CLI package is JavaScript, so the installed shim executes Node.js 18 or newer. The script verifies release checksums by default, rejects unsafe tar paths, symlinks, hardlinks, and special files, and writes the final shim atomically.

Usage

Forwarding commands mirror the agent-session command language described in the root docs. prose help is local CLI help; use prose --help or prose help <command> to inspect shell usage.

prose run programs/reviewer.md
prose run programs/reviewer.md --harness claude-sdk
prose doctor
prose lint programs/reviewer.md
prose status --graph

Development

npm run build compiles src/index.ts into dist/index.js.
npm run typecheck checks TypeScript without emitting files.
npm test runs the Vitest suite once.
npm run dev runs src/index.ts through tsx for local development.
npm run clean removes dist/.
npm run release:tarball creates the self-contained archive used by install.sh, plus a matching .sha256 file.
npm pack runs prepack, so the package contains fresh dist/ output for the packed prose bin.