ZAI CLI

MCP-native command line interface for Z.AI capabilities: vision analysis, web search, web reader, and GitHub repo exploration.

Found this useful? Follow @nummanali for more AI tooling!

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Features

• Vision - Analyze images, screenshots, diagrams, charts, videos using GLM-4.6V
• Search - Real-time web search with domain and recency filtering
• Reader - Fetch and parse web pages to markdown
• Repo - Search and read GitHub repository code via ZRead
• Tools - MCP tool discovery, schemas, and raw calls
• Code Mode - TypeScript tool chaining for agent automation

Quick Start

export Z_AI_API_KEY="your-api-key"

npx zai-cli --help
npx zai-cli vision analyze ./screenshot.png "What errors do you see?"
npx zai-cli search "React 19 new features" --count 5

Get your API key at: https://z.ai/manage-apikey/apikey-list

Installation

As an Agent Skill

OpenSkills (universal - works with any AI coding agent):

npx openskills install numman-ali/zai-cli

Claude Code (native skill marketplace):

claude skill install numman-ali/zai-cli --skill zai-cli

As a CLI Tool

npm i -g zai-cli
zai-cli --help

Or use directly with npx:

npx zai-cli --help

Usage

The CLI is self-documenting. Use --help at any level:

zai-cli --help              # All commands
zai-cli vision --help       # Vision commands
zai-cli search --help       # Search options
zai-cli repo --help         # GitHub repo commands

Examples

# Vision - analyze images
zai-cli vision analyze ./image.png "Describe this"
zai-cli vision ui-to-code ./design.png --output code
zai-cli vision extract-text ./screenshot.png --language python
zai-cli vision diagnose-error ./error.png

# Search - web search
zai-cli search "TypeScript best practices" --count 10
zai-cli search "security news" --recency oneDay

# Reader - fetch web content
zai-cli read https://docs.example.com/api
zai-cli read https://blog.example.com --format text

# Repo - GitHub exploration
zai-cli repo tree facebook/react
zai-cli repo search vercel/next.js "app router"
zai-cli repo read anthropics/anthropic-sdk-python README.md
zai-cli repo search openai/codex "config" --language en
zai-cli repo tree openai/codex --path codex-rs --depth 2

# Doctor - check setup
zai-cli doctor
zai-cli doctor --no-vision

Output Format

Default output is data-only for token efficiency. Use --output-format json for structured responses:

{
  "success": true,
  "data": "...",
  "timestamp": 1234567890
}

Notes

• repo search defaults to English results. Use --language zh for Chinese.
• repo tree supports --path (directory scope) and --depth (expand subtrees).
• tools, tool, call, doctor accept --no-vision to speed startup when vision tools are not needed.
• read supports --with-images-summary, --no-gfm, and --keep-img-data-url for richer parsing control.
• Vision tool calls automatically retry transient 5xx/network errors (default: 2 retries). Configure with ZAI_MCP_VISION_RETRY_COUNT (or ZAI_MCP_RETRY_COUNT for all tools).
• Tool discovery can be cached to speed tools/tool/doctor (default: on, 24h TTL). Configure with ZAI_MCP_TOOL_CACHE, ZAI_MCP_TOOL_CACHE_TTL_MS, ZAI_MCP_CACHE_DIR.

Repository Layout

├── packages/zai-cli/    # npm package source
├── skills/zai-cli/      # Agent skill (SKILL.md)
└── .claude-plugin/      # Claude Code marketplace config

Development

cd packages/zai-cli
npm install
npm run build
npm test
node scripts/bench-tools.mjs

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup and guidelines.

License

MIT - see LICENSE.

Links

• npm package
• OpenSkills