kimi-cli

name: kimi-cli description: Delegate coding tasks to Kimi CLI (Moonshot AI's coding agent). Use for building features, refactoring, PR reviews, and autonomous coding sessions. Requires the kimi CLI installed. version: 1.0.0 author: Hermes Agent license: MIT metadata: hermes: tags: [Coding-Agent, Kimi, Moonshot, Code-Review, Refactoring] related_skills: [claude-code, codex, opencode]

Kimi CLI

Delegate coding tasks to Kimi CLI via the Hermes terminal. Kimi CLI is Moonshot AI's autonomous coding agent that runs in the terminal.

Prerequisites

• Kimi CLI installed via uv or pip
• Authenticated: run kimi login once to log in
• Use pty=true in terminal calls — Kimi CLI is an interactive terminal app

One-Shot Tasks

terminal(command="kimi --print -p 'Add error handling to the API calls'", workdir="/path/to/project", pty=true)

For quick scratch work:

terminal(command="cd $(mktemp -d) && git init && kimi --print -p 'Build a REST API for todos'", pty=true)

Background Mode (Long Tasks)

For tasks that take minutes, use background mode so you can monitor progress:

# Start in background with PTY
terminal(command="kimi --print -p 'Refactor the auth module to use JWT'", workdir="~/project", background=true, pty=true)
# Returns session_id

# Monitor progress
process(action="poll", session_id="<id>")
process(action="log", session_id="<id>")

# Kill if needed
process(action="kill", session_id="<id>")

Key Flags

Print Mode (Recommended for Automation)

Kimi's --print mode is designed for scripting:

# Basic print mode
kimi --print -p "List all Python files and their sizes"

# Quiet mode (only final output)
kimi --quiet -p "Generate a Git commit message for current changes"

# JSON output for programmatic use
kimi --print -p "Task" --output-format=stream-json

Exit codes:

• 0 - Success
• 1 - Failure (not retryable)
• 75 - Failure (retryable, e.g., rate limit)

PR Reviews

Clone to a temp directory to avoid modifying the working tree:

REVIEW=$(mktemp -d) && git clone <repo> $REVIEW && cd $REVIEW && gh pr checkout 42 && kimi --print -p 'Review this PR against main. Check for bugs, security issues, and style.'

Or use git worktrees:

git worktree add /tmp/pr-42 pr-42-branch
kimi --print -p 'Review the changes in this branch vs main' --work-dir /tmp/pr-42

Parallel Work

Spawn multiple Kimi instances for independent tasks:

terminal(command="kimi --print -p 'Fix the login bug'", workdir="/tmp/issue-1", background=true, pty=true)
terminal(command="kimi --print -p 'Add unit tests for auth'", workdir="/tmp/issue-2", background=true, pty=true)

# Monitor all
process(action="list")

Sessions

Kimi maintains sessions automatically per working directory:

# Continue last session
kimi --continue

# Resume specific session
kimi --session <session-id>

# View session info
kimi info

Additional Commands

Configuration

Config file location: ~/.kimi/config.toml

Environment variables:

• KIMI_API_KEY - API key for authentication
• KIMI_BASE_URL - Custom API endpoint

Rules

1. Always use pty=true — Kimi CLI is an interactive terminal app and may hang without a PTY
2. Use --print for one-shots — Non-interactive mode exits cleanly
3. Use --quiet for clean output — Only returns the final result
4. Background for long tasks — use background=true and monitor with process tool
5. Check exit codes — 75 means retryable (rate limit), 1 means permanent failure
6. Don't interfere — monitor with poll/log, be patient with long-running tasks