Kimi CLI
Shares rank 32 of 41 coding agents by recommenders
Free open-source coding agent CLI that people pair with Kimi models and find pretty good. The most common caveat is that it leaks memory.
Free open-source coding agent CLI that people pair with Kimi models and find pretty good. The most common caveat is that it leaks memory.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 90%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works well with Kimi models
“Kimi works great in their CLI, but their CLI has a number of workarounds for quirks of their models”
Comment from 12 Jun 2026 in “Kimi K2.7-Code: open-source coding model with better token efficiency” “I have been very impressed with this model and also with the Kimi CLI.”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Kimi K2.5 Technical Report [pdf]” “Kimi performs better with kimi-cli and also save a bit of quota.”
Comment from 29 May 2026 in “Claude Opus 4.8” Used regularly with Kimi subscription
“after using Kimi K2.5 and Kimi CLI for the last few days”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Kimi Released Kimi K2.5, Open-Source Visual SOTA-Agentic Model” “I use Kimi via a kimi.com subscription and Kimi CLI”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “Kimi K2.6 just beat Claude, GPT-5.5, and Gemini in a coding challenge”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Leaks memory
“I like Kimi-cli but it does leak memory.”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Kimi K2.5 Technical Report [pdf]”
Other coding agents people recommend
The four most recommended other coding agents, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Copilot | 571 | 993 | 37% | 12 | 1 yr46 owners | — |
| oh-my-pi | 104 | 28 | 79% | 9 | 2 mo5 owners | Approved |
| Grok Build CLI | 66 | 114 | 37% | 6 | — | — |
| DeepSeek Harness | 63 | 28 | 69% | 4 | 1 mo5 owners | Approved |
| Kimi CLIThis page | 9 | 1 | 90% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
10 of the 12 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Kimi-cli is actually very interesting in that respect for the checkpoint / messaging mechanism I mentioned”
“Kimi works great in their CLI, but their CLI has a number of workarounds for quirks of their models”
“Kimi quickly collapses into tool calling loops without measures in their CLI”
“Kimi performs better with kimi-cli and also save a bit of quota.”
“I use Kimi via a kimi.com subscription and Kimi CLI”
“I have been very impressed with this model and also with the Kimi CLI.”
“I like Kimi-cli but it does leak memory.”
“Kimi Cli's pretty good too imo.”
“which I am thinking of downloading & working with kimi-cli to add more styling and other stuff”
“after using Kimi K2.5 and Kimi CLI for the last few days”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.