DEV Community: Sarath C

I Built an Autonomous CLI Agent – Here's How It Works

Sarath C — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 04:26:56 +0000

I've spent the last several months building Krud AI — an autonomous CLI agent that understands plain English and executes multi-step tasks in your terminal. Today I want to share how it works, what makes it different, and how you can try it yourself.

The Problem

Every developer I know has the same experience: you're deep in a project, and you need to do something slightly outside your muscle memory. Maybe it's a complex git rebase, a Docker networking issue, or a database migration. You open a browser, search, read Stack Overflow, copy-paste a command, realize it doesn't quite fit your situation, iterate...

Twenty minutes gone. Flow state broken.

I wanted a tool that lived in the terminal — where the work actually happens — and could handle these tasks autonomously.

What Krud AI Does

Krud AI is a CLI agent. You type what you want in plain English, and it:

Understands your intent — using Claude (Anthropic's AI) to parse your request in context
Plans the steps — breaks the task into a sequence of shell commands
Executes autonomously — runs commands, reads the output, adapts if something fails
Reports back — shows you what it did and what it found

It's not a chatbot wrapper. It's an agent with real shell access that can iterate on failures.

Architecture

krud-cli (Rust)
    │
    ├── Auth: Device code flow → dabcloud.in/cli-auth
    ├── Chat: Streaming HTTP to krud-api.onrender.com
    └── UI: Crossterm + purple animated rabbit mascot 🐇

krud-api (FastAPI / Python)
    │
    ├── /v1/chat — Claude API with tool use (bash execution)
    ├── /v1/account — User management
    ├── /v1/billing — Stripe integration
    └── Database: Supabase PostgreSQL

The CLI is written in Rust for performance and a clean binary distribution. The backend is Python/FastAPI because rapid iteration matters more there.

The Animated Rabbit

One thing I'm genuinely proud of: the terminal UI. When Krud is thinking, a purple Unicode rabbit animates in-place in your terminal — no screen clearing, no flicker, just smooth in-place updates using ANSI escape codes.

  ██ ██
 ████████
██ ████ ██   ← thinking...
  ████████
   ██████

It uses crossterm for cross-platform terminal control and a background thread with AtomicBool for clean cancellation.

How to Try It

# macOS
brew install max345789/tap/krud

# Linux
curl -fsSL https://dabcloud.in/install.sh | bash

# Then
krud login
krud "find all TODO comments in this repo and summarize them"

You get a free trial — no credit card required to start.

What's Next

File context: Automatically include relevant files when you ask about code
Project memory: Remember decisions you've made across sessions
Team sharing: Share agent sessions with your team

The Stack

CLI: Rust, crossterm, tokio, reqwest
Backend: Python, FastAPI, Claude API, Stripe, Supabase
Landing page: Next.js 14, deployed on Vercel at dabcloud.in
Infra: Render (backend), Vercel (frontend), GitHub Actions (CI/CD)

I'd love to hear your thoughts. What tasks do you find yourself doing repeatedly in the terminal that you'd love to automate? Drop them in the comments — it helps me prioritize the roadmap.

Try it at dabcloud.in or check out the GitHub repo.

I Built an Autonomous CLI Agent – Here's How It Works

Sarath C — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 03:51:15 +0000

I've spent the last several months building Krud AI — an autonomous CLI agent that understands plain English and executes multi-step tasks in your terminal.

The Problem

Every developer I know has the same experience: you're deep in a project and need to do something slightly outside your muscle memory — a complex git rebase, Docker networking, a database migration. You open a browser, search, copy-paste, iterate...

Twenty minutes gone. Flow state broken.

I wanted a tool that lived in the terminal — where the work actually happens — and could handle these tasks autonomously.

What Krud AI Does

Krud AI is a CLI agent. You type what you want in plain English, and it:

Understands your intent — using Claude (Anthropic's AI)
Plans the steps — breaks the task into shell commands
Executes autonomously — runs commands, reads output, adapts on failure
Reports back — shows what it did and found

It's not a chatbot wrapper. It's an agent with real shell access.

Architecture

krud-cli (Rust)
    ├── Auth: Device code flow → dabcloud.in/cli-auth
    ├── Chat: Streaming HTTP to krud-api.onrender.com
    └── UI: Crossterm + purple animated rabbit mascot

krud-api (FastAPI)
    ├── /v1/chat — Claude API with tool use (bash execution)
    ├── /v1/account — User management
    ├── /v1/billing — Stripe
    └── Database: Supabase PostgreSQL

The Animated Rabbit

When Krud is thinking, a purple Unicode rabbit animates in-place — no screen clearing, smooth ANSI in-place updates using crossterm and a background thread with AtomicBool cancellation.

How to Try It

# macOS
brew install max345789/tap/krud

# Linux
curl -fsSL https://dabcloud.in/install.sh | bash

# Then
krud login
krud "find all TODO comments in this repo and summarize them"

Free trial, no credit card required.

The Stack

CLI: Rust, crossterm, tokio, reqwest
Backend: Python, FastAPI, Claude API, Stripe, Supabase
Frontend: Next.js 14 on Vercel at dabcloud.in
Infra: Render, Vercel, GitHub Actions

What terminal tasks do you do repeatedly that you'd love to automate? Drop them in the comments!

Try it: dabcloud.in | GitHub

I Built an Autonomous CLI Agent – Here's How It Works

Sarath C — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 18:16:00 +0000

I've spent the last several months building Krud AI — an autonomous CLI agent that operates entirely in your terminal. No browser, no IDE plugin, no copy-pasting suggestions. It just acts.

The Problem: AI That Helps But Doesn't Do

Most AI developer tools fall into one of two patterns:

Chat-based — you describe a problem, the AI returns text, you implement it yourself.
Inline suggestions — you write code, the AI autocompletes the next line.

Both are useful. Neither is autonomous.

What I kept wanting was something that could take a goal like "this test suite is failing on CI, fix it" and actually go fix it — running commands, reading logs, making changes, verifying the result — while I worked on something else.

That's what I built.

What Krud AI Actually Does

Krud AI is a CLI agent. You run it in your terminal, describe a task in plain English, and it executes it.

curl -fsSL https://install.krud.ai | sh
krud login
krud chat

From there, you talk to it like a colleague who has full access to your terminal:

> The integration tests are failing after I added the new auth middleware. Fix it.

Krud will:

Plan — break the goal into concrete steps
Execute — run shell commands in your real environment
Observe — read stdout and stderr, detect errors, adapt
Complete — finish the task or ask a targeted question

The Architecture

The core loop is a standard LLM agent loop with tool use:

[user goal] → [plan] → [execute shell command] → [observe output] → [adapt] → [repeat]

What's less standard is the rolling token budget system. Long autonomous tasks generate a lot of context. The rolling budget dynamically summarizes older context while keeping recent tool outputs verbatim — letting Krud handle long multi-step workflows without losing state.

Real Use Cases

Debugging CI failures:

> My GitHub Actions build is failing. Here's the workflow file. Fix it.

Scaffolding from a description:

> Create a FastAPI service with Postgres, Docker Compose, and a /healthz endpoint

Automated git workflows:

> All changes in this PR are reviewed. Squash-merge to main.

Cross-file refactoring:

> Rename the User model to Account across the entire codebase, including tests

What Makes It Different

Copilot CLI is great for single-command suggestions. It doesn't execute multi-step workflows autonomously.
Warp AI is a beautiful terminal emulator with AI features. It's not autonomous — it still relies on you to run commands.
Krud AI is purpose-built for autonomy. It executes, observes, and adapts on its own.

Install

curl -fsSL https://install.krud.ai | sh

Supports macOS Apple Silicon, macOS Intel, and Linux x86_64.

Free trial, no credit card: https://dabcloud.in
GitHub: https://github.com/max345789/krud-ai

Would love feedback — especially from people running it on Linux or unusual setups.