Getting Started with Zene

Welcome to Zene, the minimalist AI coding engine. This guide will walk you through installing, configuring, and running your first agentic workflow.

Installation

Prerequisites

Zene is written in Rust, so you'll need the Rust toolchain installed.

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Build from Source

Currently, the best way to install Zene is to build it from source.

git clone https://github.com/lipish/zene.git
cd zene
cargo install --path .

Verify the installation:

zene --version

Configuration

Zene follows the "12-factor app" philosophy and uses environment variables for configuration. No complex YAML files required.

Set your API Keys

Zene uses a multi-model architecture. You can mix and match providers.

# Planner (DeepSeek V3 is recommended)
export ZENE_PLANNER_PROVIDER="deepseek"
export ZENE_PLANNER_API_KEY="sk-..."

# Executor (Zhipu GLM-4 Flash is fast and cheap)
export ZENE_EXECUTOR_PROVIDER="zhipu"
export ZENE_EXECUTOR_API_KEY="sk-..."

# Reflector (Minimax is excellent for critique)
export ZENE_REFLECTOR_PROVIDER="minimax"
export ZENE_REFLECTOR_API_KEY="sk-..."

# Optional: Enable Semantic Memory (RAG)
# Default: false (saves ~200MB RAM)
export ZENE_USE_SEMANTIC_MEMORY=true

Usage

One-Shot Mode

Execute a single instruction directly from the command line. Perfect for quick scripts or refactoring.

# Create a file
zene run "Create a hello.txt with content 'Hello Zene'"

# Refactor code (Context aware)
zene run "Refactor src/main.rs to extract the CLI logic into a separate module"

Server Mode (JSON-RPC)

Start Zene as a persistent server. This is how IDEs and other tools integrate with Zene.

zene server

The server communicates via Stdio using JSON-RPC 2.0.

Example Request:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "method": "agent.run",
  "params": {
    "instruction": "Analyze the project structure",
    "session_id": "my-session-001"
  },
  "id": 1
}

Next Steps

• Learn about the Architecture
• See Examples
• Read the Blog