axel

A CLI for AI-assisted development. Portable agents across LLMs. Reproducible terminal workspaces.

The Problem

Vibe coding is here. LLMs are racing to top benchmarks with infinite funding behind them. You want to switch when one pulls ahead—but your agents are stuck in .claude/ or .codex/.

Not using agents? You're leaving most of the LLM potential on the table. Copy-pasting them between tools? They drift out of sync.

Meanwhile, your terminal is chaos and your IDE crashes and keep losing context.

axel fixes both and going beyond.

Features

Agent Portability

Write your agents once. axel symlinks them wherever they need to go.

agents/
  code-reviewer.md
  frontend-engineer.md
  security-auditor.md

Switch LLMs by changing one line. No more copy-pasting between .claude/agents/ and .codex/agents/.

Reproducible Workspaces

One command. Your entire workspace materializes.

# AXEL.md (frontmatter)
workspace: myproject

shells:
  - type: claude
    agents: ["*"]
  - type: shell
    path: ./backend
  - type: shell
    path: ./frontend

terminal:
  profiles:
    default:
      type: tmux
      claude:
        col: 0
        row: 0
      backend:
        col: 1
        row: 0
      frontend:
        col: 1
        row: 1

axel

Claude on the left, servers on the right. Close everything, come back tomorrow, run axel again—exactly where you left off.

Installation

curl -sL https://install.axel.md | bash

Or build from source:

cargo install --path crates/cli

Prerequisites

• tmux for workspace management
• One or more AI coding assistants

Supported LLMs

Agents can be dispatched to any of the following LLM:

• Claude Code - Anthropic
• Codex - OpenAI
• OpenCode - Open source
• Antigravity - Google

Quick Start

See the full Quick Start guide for detailed instructions.

# Initialize a workspace in current directory
axel init

# Import your existing agents
axel agent import ./.claude/agents/web-developer.md
axel agent import ./agents/

# Launch a single AI shell (agents are symlinked automatically)
axel claude

# Or launch the full workspace
axel

Note: axel bootstrap exists to auto-discover agents across your machine, but it's experimental. We recommend manually importing agents with axel agent import <file|dir> for more control.

Usage

# Daily workflow
axel                          # Launch workspace from AXEL.md
axel -w feat/auth             # Launch in a git worktree
axel -k                       # Kill session and clean up

# Sessions
axel session list             # List running sessions
axel session join <name>      # Attach to a session
axel session kill <name>      # Kill a session

# Agents
axel agent list               # List all agents
axel agent import <path>      # Import from file or directory
axel agent new                # Create a new agent
axel agent fork <name>        # Copy global agent locally
axel agent link <name>        # Symlink global agent locally

See the CLI Reference for all options.

Configuration

Shells

Define what runs in each pane:

shells:
  # AI assistants
  - type: claude
    agents: ["code-reviewer", "frontend-engineer"]
    model: claude-sonnet-4-20250514

  - type: codex
    agents: ["*"]  # All agents

  - type: antigravity
    agents: ["*"]

  # Custom commands
  - type: shell
    path: ./backend
    command: npm run dev

  - type: shell
    path: ./frontend
    command: pnpm dev

Profiles

Define terminal layouts:

terminal:
  profiles:
    default:
      type: tmux  # tmux, tmux_cc (iTerm2), or shell
      claude:
        col: 0
        row: 0
      backend:
        col: 1
        row: 0
        height: 50
      frontend:
        col: 1
        row: 1

Agents

Centralize your agents:

agents:
  - path: ./agents           # Local agents
  - path: ~/.config/axel/agents  # Global agents

For Developers Who

• Run multiple AI coding assistants and are tired of maintaining separate configs
• Work across several repositories that need to be running simultaneously
• Want reproducible dev environments they can spin up instantly
• Believe their tooling should adapt to them, not the other way around

Links

• Website
• Documentation

License

MIT