I built a free open-source alternative to Cursor & Claude Code in Python: Oblivion AI

Rohith R — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:45:55 +0000

As a Computer Science student from India, I got tired of constantly switching context: copying code from ChatGPT in a browser tab, pasting it into VS Code, realizing a function was missing, and repeating the cycle over and over.

Proprietary tools like Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and Claude Code solve this workflow problem, but they are closed-source, cost $10–$20/month, and lock your codebase into third-party cloud infrastructure.

So over the past few months, I built Oblivion AI 🔮 — a terminal-native, open-source AI pair programmer that lives in your terminal, understands your local codebase semantically, executes multi-file edits atomically, and talks back via natural voice.

And best of all: It costs $0 to run.

🌟 What Makes Oblivion AI Different?
Oblivion AI isn't just a simple wrapper around a single API. It's a complete Agentic Systems Architecture built in Python with Textual, ChromaDB, and SQLite.

⚡ Multi-Model Resilience with Auto-Fallback Most AI coding tools fail completely if a single API provider rate-limits or goes down. Oblivion uses an automated fallback chain across Ollama Cloud (Gemma 4 31B / Qwen 3 Coder 480B), Google Gemini 2.5 Flash, and Groq Llama 3.3.

If one provider rate-limits, Oblivion silently switches to the next model in the chain with smart, error-specific cooldowns (e.g., 4-hour cooldown for daily quota limits vs 1-minute for RPM limits).

🔍 3-Layer Hybrid Search Engine (RAG) When you ask Oblivion "Where is authentication handled?", it queries three parallel search layers:

Layer 1 (AST Symbol Index): Uses Python's native ast module to chunk code at function/class boundaries and indexes them in SQLite for <1ms exact symbol lookups.
Layer 2 (Full-Text Search): Uses SQLite FTS5 for exact text and error-signature matching.
Layer 3 (Vector Embeddings): Uses ChromaDB with all-minilm embeddings for semantic natural-language conceptual queries.
Results are deduplicated, merged, and ranked. Exact symbol matches always win Rank #1 over fuzzy semantic guesses.

🔌 Built-In MCP Server (Model Context Protocol) Oblivion isn't just a Terminal UI — it's also an MCP Server. Running oblivion mcp exposes 10 read-only code intelligence tools over stdio.

This means external clients like Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Zed can plug directly into Oblivion's local RAG index without launching the TUI!

🎙️ Hands-Free Voice I/O & Wake Word You can speak to Oblivion naturally:

Background Wake Word: Listens for "Hey Jarvis" using openwakeword (runs 100% locally on CPU).
Silence Auto-Stop: Detects a 3-second pause in speech to automatically stop recording and submit the query.
Neural TTS Replies: Responds back aloud using 8 neural voice personas via edge-tts or ElevenLabs.

🛡️ 3-Tier Safety & Permission Gates Oblivion classifies all 38 built-in tools into three security tiers:

🟢 Read Tier (23 Tools): Auto-executes silently (read_file, search_code, git_status).
🟡 Mutate Tier (14 Tools): Displays a unified colored diff preview and asks for explicit approval (write_file, batch_edit, git_commit).
🔴 Destructive Tier (1 Tool): High-risk commands (run_bash with rm -rf or git push --force) require strict verification and never auto-approve.
🧰 38 Built-In Agent Tools
Oblivion ships with a complete toolset for real-world software engineering:

Git Suite: git_status, git_diff, git_log, git_commit, git_branch, git_undo.
Atomic Batch Edits: batch_edit creates or modifies multiple files across a project in a single approval step.
Test Runner Integration: Auto-detects and runs pytest, jest, vitest, or npm test suites with structured failure extraction.
Web Search: Integrated DuckDuckGo search, web scraper (fetch_page), Stack Overflow search, and PyPI/npm registry lookup.
8085 CPU Emulator: Built-in Intel 8085 microprocessor simulator and 2-pass assembler for CS education.
⚡ Quick Start
Installing Oblivion AI takes less than 30 seconds:

Bash

Install with Voice & Neural TTS support

pip install "oblivion-agent[voice]"

Launch the Terminal UI

oblivion
Other CLI Subcommands:
Bash

Run as an MCP Server (for Claude Desktop / Cursor)

oblivion mcp

Open MCP Inspector in Browser

oblivion inspect
🔗 Links & Community
Oblivion AI is 100% free and open-source under the MIT License.

🌐 Website: oblivion.run.place
🐙 GitHub Repository: Rohith-s-hub/Oblivion-agent
📦 PyPI Package: oblivion-agent
💼 LinkedIn: Rohith Rajkumar
If you find this project useful or interesting, please consider dropping a Star ⭐ on GitHub — it helps a lot as an independent student developer!

DEV Community: Rohith R

I built a free open-source alternative to Cursor & Claude Code in Python: Oblivion AI

Install with Voice & Neural TTS support

Launch the Terminal UI

Run as an MCP Server (for Claude Desktop / Cursor)

Open MCP Inspector in Browser