DEV Community

Cover image for Building Local AI Agents from Your Terminal with Opperator
Farouq Aldori
Farouq Aldori

Posted on

Building Local AI Agents from Your Terminal with Opperator

Hey all 👋

I’ve been working on something called Opperator, an open-source framework for building and running general-purpose AI agents locally, right from your terminal.

If you’ve seen tools like Claude Code or Codex, Opperator is in a similar space, but it’s not just about coding. It’s about automation. You can use it to create agents that organize files, generate content, process data, or monitor APIs.

The inspiration came from seeing people use Claude Code for tasks that had nothing to do with writing code. They were organizing notes, drafting documents, managing personal data, even planning events.

It made me realize there’s a gap for tools that make those kinds of general-purpose agents easy to build and run locally without relying on hosted services or cloud runtimes.

How it works

Opperator provides everything you need to create and run agents that automate your personal workflows.

It includes:

  • A terminal interface for interacting with your agents
  • A background daemon for running agents with logging, persistence, and secret management
  • A focused Python SDK for writing agent logic

Each agent runs as its own local process, in its own environment, and can use any model you choose, including local LLMs! 🚀

Example workflow

Opperator ships with a default "Builder" agent that helps you build agents without actually writing any code, of course you can code agents manually or with Claude Code or Codex.

Let’s say you want an agent that looks at your screenshots folder and renames files based on what’s in the image.

You can describe it in plain language:

I want to create an agent that analyzes my screenshots folder, uses AI to label and renames all files based on their content.
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

The Builder agent will scaffold the code, install dependencies, and let you iterate on the agent without restarting anything.

Once done, the agent will be running locally on your laptop. It just gets to work, executing the task it was designed to do. No servers, no cloud, no external dependencies.

Get started

Installation:

curl -fsSL https://opper.ai/opperator-install | bash
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Launch Opperator:

op
# or the full command name
opperator
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Resources:

You can install it and start building right away.

I’m really curious what kinds of agents you’ll come up with — whether it’s something that organizes your files, monitors APIs, or automates your creative workflow.

If this sounds interesting, give Opperator a try and share what you build. Every bit of feedback helps shape where the project goes next.

And if you like the idea, drop a star on GitHub, it really helps others discover the project and keeps the momentum going!

Top comments (0)