Zerostack – A Unix-inspired coding agent written in pure Rust

· ai-agents coding systems · Source ↗

TLDR

  • Minimal Rust coding agent (~7k LoC, 8.9MB binary, ~12MB RAM) with multi-provider LLM support, permission gating, and a TUI.

Key Takeaways

  • Benchmarks claim ~12MB RAM while working vs ~300MB for JS-based agents like opencode; ~1.5% CPU vs ~20% for opencode.
  • Supports OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Ollama, and custom providers via config; install with cargo install zerostack.
  • Four permission modes (restrictive, standard, accept-all, yolo) with per-tool glob patterns, session allowlists, and doom-loop detection after 3 identical tool calls.
  • Built-in prompt modes (code, plan, review, debug, ask, security, etc.) switchable at runtime via /prompt; loads AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md automatically.
  • Experimental features include headless loop mode for long-horizon tasks and git worktree integration for branch-per-task workflows.

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