openclaw/acpx

Headless CLI client for stateful Agent Client Protocol (ACP) sessions

What it solves

acpx provides a unified, headless command-line interface for interacting with various AI coding agents that follow the Agent Client Protocol (ACP). It eliminates the need to use separate, inconsistent terminal interfaces for different agents, offering a standardized way to manage persistent sessions, one-shot executions, and machine-readable outputs for automation.

How it works

It acts as a client for ACP-compatible servers. Users can select a specific agent (such as Codex, Pi, or Claude Code) and send prompts through the CLI. The tool manages session state locally (under ~/.acpx/), allowing context to be maintained across multiple prompts. It also supports "flows"—TypeScript workflows that combine AI turns with deterministic logic and checkpoints.

Who it’s for

Developers and orchestrators who want to standardize how they trigger AI coding agents from the terminal or embed agentic capabilities into other applications via its runtime library.

Highlights

  • Unified Interface: Use a consistent command shape across multiple different AI agents.
  • Session Management: Supports persistent, named sessions to maintain context and parallel workstreams.
  • Automation Friendly: Offers NDJSON output for machine-readable events, including tool calls and diffs, instead of terminal escape sequences.
  • Extensible Workflows: Includes a flow system for creating multi-step TypeScript workflows.
  • Flexible Permissions: Provides configurable permission modes to control agent access to the filesystem.

Related

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    A Node‑JS server that adapts OpenAI Codex to the Agent Client Protocol, exposing Codex’s code‑generation capabilities through ACP’s standardized request/response format and supporting advanced AIR extensions, sub‑agent sessions, and rich I/O.

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    A local desktop workspace that lets users configure and run multiple coding-agent CLIs from a single interface, managing API profiles and project sessions.

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    Agent Client Protocol (ACP) is a language‑agnostic JSON‑RPC standard that lets code editors talk to generative‑AI coding agents. The repository provides the Rust schema crate, versioned JSON‑Schema files, and links to official SDKs (Kotlin, Java, Python, Rust, TypeScript). It defines a stable protocol version (1) negotiated at runtime, enabling editors and agents to interoperate without custom adapters.

  • Project
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