Purpose-built for software engineering workflows, with coding tools, sessions, and subagents.
Why Penguin
Purpose-built for software engineering workflows.
Penguin carries the README promise onto the homepage: coding tools, sessions, subagents, long-session context management, and one backend across every interface.
Stateful runtime: sessions, checkpoints, tool history, and replayable transcripts.
Context Window Manager: long sessions stay coherent through category-aware token budgeting, truncation, and replay, preserving recency and message-category priorities across long-running sessions.
Multi-agent orchestration: planner/implementer/QA patterns, subagents, and scoped delegation.
Multiple surfaces: TUI, CLI, web API, and Python client on the same backend.
OpenCode-compatible TUI path: Penguin web/core now powers an OpenCode-style terminal UX.
Interfaces
Same runtime. Multiple surfaces.
Penguin exposes the same runtime through several surfaces: terminal UI, scriptable CLI, web/API backend, and Python embedding.
Terminal-first coding workflow with streaming, tools, and session navigation.
Scriptable CLI interface for prompts, tasks, config, and automation.
REST + WebSocket/SSE backend for the TUI and custom integrations.
PenguinAgent, PenguinClient, and PenguinAPI for embedding Penguin in code.
What You Get
Coding workflow tools, durable state, and orchestration.
Coding workflow tools: file reads/writes/diffs, shell commands, test execution, search, code analysis, and background process management.
Context Window Manager: category-based token budgets, multimodal truncation, and live usage reporting to keep histories within model limits. This supports theoretically infinite sessions.
Persistent memory and file-backed context: declarative notes, summary notes, context artifacts, docs cache, and daily journal continuity.
Multi-agent execution: isolated or shared-context subagents, delegation, planner/implementer/QA patterns, and background task execution.
Browser and research support: web search plus browser automation for documentation, web workflows, and UI testing.
Session durability: checkpoints, rollback, branching, transcript replay, and long-running task continuity.
Project and task orchestration backed by SQLite, including todo tracking and Run Mode.
Native and gateway model support across OpenAI, Anthropic, and OpenRouter by default, with LiteLLM available as an optional extra.
Quick Start
Install Penguin, set a model key, and launch.
The README recommends uv for faster installs, simpler Python environment management, and this repo's safer dependency workflow. Plain pip still works.
$
uv tool install penguin-ai$
pip install penguin-ai$
export OPENROUTER_API_KEY="your_api_key"$
penguinOpen-source coding agent. Scalable runtime. Real workflows.
Start in the TUI, automate through the CLI, serve it over the web/API, or embed Penguin in Python. The point is continuity: durable state, workspace-aware tools, and multiple interfaces on the same core.