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zerostack

Terminal coding agent in Rust with permission modes and swappable prompts

Documentation ↗ (opens in a new tab)Repository on GitHub ↗ (opens in a new tab)
Stars
1.7k
License
GPL-3.0
Last commit
Oct 2026
Last release
Sep 2026
Language
Rust

Missed the latest GitHub check; these facts may be older.

Overview

zerostack is a terminal coding agent written in Rust, inspired by pi and opencode. It talks to OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Ollama and custom providers, and offers five permission modes, saved sessions, subagents and runtime-switchable system prompts such as code, plan and review. Memory, hooks, ACP, advisor and multimodal input are compile-time features, not in the default build.

Who it is for: Developers wanting a light terminal coding agent with fine-grained permissions

Strengths

  • README reports ~16MB average RAM, versus ~300MB for opencode, per its own measurements
  • Five permission modes with per-tool glob rules and doom-loop detection
  • Optional bubblewrap or zerobox sandbox masks ~/.ssh, ~/.aws and similar credential directories
  • Hooks use a settings.json format largely compatible with Claude Code hooks

Weaknesses

  • Memory, hooks, ACP, advisor and multimodal need non-default cargo features
  • Windows support is untested, per the README
  • Sandbox falls back to unsandboxed bash if backend is missing, unless sandbox-required is set
  • GPL-3.0 license may limit embedding in proprietary products

What it needs

  • no GPU
  • Needs bubblewrap (optional, for --sandbox), zerobox (optional, macOS sandbox), LLM provider API key
  • Models: OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Ollama

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