efr

efr is a terminal-first AI agent harness. It lives inside your shell. It manages the whole machine, not only one project directory.

~/p/app $ , why does cargo test fail?

A line that starts with a comma goes to the agent. Every other line is your normal shell. The reply goes into your scrollback, like the output of any command. efr is not a full-screen program.

What it is

• It lives in zsh. A line that starts with , goes to the agent, exactly as you typed it. zsh never reads it as shell syntax, and history keeps it as you typed it. , alone, or Ctrl+Space, switches sticky agent mode on.
• A daemon owns the state. efrd runs as a systemd user service. It holds the conversations and the hidden shells. When you close a terminal, you lose nothing.
• The agent runs commands in real shells. Each conversation has its own hidden zsh. The agent sees rendered screens, not raw escape codes. When a command asks for a password or a [Y/n] answer, efr asks you below the reply. The hidden shell tells more.
• Scope follows you, permissions follow the path. The shell sends the current directory with each prompt. efrd decides the scope of each turn: the machine, a path or a project. What the agent can change depends on the target path, not on the directory where you stand.
• A sandbox for the agent. In the auto mode, each command of the agent runs in a kernel sandbox. It can build and test your project with no question. A reviewer model decides most actions that leave the sandbox. The sandbox tells more.
• No other agent below it. efrd owns the model loop and talks to the model API directly. It does not wrap another coding agent.

Status

efr is pre-alpha. The first milestone runs. It has the daemon with its event log, the shell tool, the permission rules, the zsh plugin and the efr CLI. It has three model providers: the ChatGPT plan, an OpenAI API key, and Anthropic's Claude models with an API key. efrd can also serve the efr phone app over Tailscale; the app is a preview that you build yourself (The phone app). MCP servers, skills, memory and attaching to a hidden shell come in later milestones.

efr runs on Linux with zsh and a systemd user session.

Where to start

• Install efr, start the daemon and log in.
• Your first prompt tells what to type and what you see.
• How efr works shows the parts and how a prompt moves through them.
• Permission modes tells what the agent can do without a question.
• Settings tells how to change efr, and the config.toml reference lists every key.
• Troubleshooting helps when something does not work.

The changelog lists the changes of each release.

Source

The source code is on GitHub, under the MIT licence.