ZCode

Overview

ZCode is an AI coding workbench from Z.ai that provides desktop, browser, and terminal Agent experiences. It is designed for vibe coding and complex goals, with multiple agents, long-running task management through Goals, and remote control from messaging platforms.

Key Features

• Long-running tasks: Goals supports continuous planning, execution, and verification for complex work.
• Bot control: start and steer ZCode from WeChat, Feishu, or Telegram so work can continue anywhere.
• Deep GLM-5.3 integration: optimized for reasoning, coding, and multi-agent collaboration, with GLM-5.3-Flash built in for multimodal tasks such as screenshot understanding and image analysis.
• Multiple surfaces: desktop application, browser interface, and terminal Agent, plus a CLI distribution that can run TUI or Web modes.
• UI Plugin development support, including examples such as Excalidraw canvas collaboration.
• Shared UI, services, server, RPC, and client SDK packages organized in the repository.

Use Cases

• Managing complex coding goals with continuous planning, execution, and verification.
• Steering development work remotely from WeChat, Feishu, or Telegram.
• Using a terminal or browser interface without Electron for local Agent and Web workflows.
• Building and testing UI plugins from provided examples and host integration entry points.

Getting Started

• Download ZCode installers for macOS, Windows, or Linux from the all-downloads section, or read the documentation.
• For source development, prepare Git, Node.js 24.14.0, and pnpm 10.33.2, then run pnpm bootstrap in the repository root.
• Run pnpm dev:desktop to start the desktop development workflow.
• Run zcode for the terminal interface, or zcode --web to start the Web interface.
• Run pnpm dev:web to start the Web development server and backend together.

Deployment & Requirements

• Desktop installers are available for macOS Apple Silicon, macOS Intel, Windows 64-bit, Windows ARM64, Linux x64, and Linux ARM64.
• Source development requires Git, Node.js 24.14.0, and pnpm 10.33.2, with versions defined by mise.toml.
• The CLI distribution still requires Node.js, with the version defined by mise.toml.
• Web mode listens on 127.0.0.1 by default, auto-selects a free port, and can bind to other hosts with --host.

Before You Adopt

• License: Apache-2.0. Review its terms before using, modifying, or distributing the project.
• Linux x64 downloads are labeled Beta in the source.
• GLM Coding Plan prices and benefits may change, with final details shown on z.ai.
• Old Lite users need to switch to the new build commands, environment variables, and install script; new installation does not delete old Lite directories or migrate or delete existing session data.