A coding agent you can afford to leave running.
Open-source, bring-your-own-key, built for cheap models. Explicit permissions, no telemetry.
One full day on DeepSeek costs less than a coffee.
Nib keeps the prompt prefix stable so provider caches hit. Measured on a real day of work, 2026-10-12, DeepSeek V4 Flash.
cache hit rate across 270M input tokens
requests in the day
total bill, including a few hours at peak pricing
Three commands to a first session.
Needs Node.js 20 or newer and Git. Keys are stored locally with mode 0600.
# install npm install -g @amenski/nib # add a DeepSeek, OpenAI, OpenRouter, Groq or Ollama key nib auth # interactive session, read-only until you switch to /mode code nib
Everything a hosted agent does, inside one process you can read.
Permissions are rules, not vibes
Every tool call passes an allow / ask / deny engine before it runs. Sandbox profiles confine the shell to your workspace. Every decision is logged.
Rewindable checkpoints
Edits are snapshotted in a shadow Git repo, so code and conversation roll back together.
Resumable sessions
nib -c picks up where you stopped. Context is compacted, never lost.
MCP, skills, sub-agents
nib mcp add wires any server. Agent Skills and .nib/agents definitions load per project.
Headless for scripts
nib -p "..." runs one shot with no TUI. Hooks and custom slash commands work the way Claude Code users expect.
Your key, your model.
Switch providers mid-session with /model. Nothing leaves your machine except the request to the provider you chose.
Install
Apache 2.0. macOS and Linux.
npm install -g @amenski/nib
brew install amenski/tap/nib