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kana is the Kanaeru command-line client. It talks to the same Kanaeru service as the web app, so anything you start in the terminal shows up in the browser and the other way round.

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Install

kana ships inside the Agent Manager bundle, so there is no separate package to install. When you connect a machine, the installer puts the kanaeru-agent-manager and kana executables in your user-local binary directory (~/.local/bin on macOS and Linux) and adds that directory to your login PATH. Supported platforms are macOS on Apple Silicon, Linux x64, and Windows x64.

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Updates

kana never updates itself. After each command it checks, at most every six hours, whether Kanaeru expects a newer version. If yours is behind, it prints a notice on stderr. To update, open the machine page (/machine-connect, or Connect in the chat box’s runtime selector) and choose Upgrade agent manager, which ships the matching kana. Set KANAERU_CLI_SKIP_UPDATE_CHECK=1 to silence the notice.

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Sign in

kana login opens your browser on the Connect Kanaeru CLI page. Sign in with the same Google or Microsoft account you use for the web app, and the terminal finishes the login on its own. The browser never hands tokens to the terminal: it returns a single-use code that the CLI exchanges with a PKCE verifier only it holds. If you’re on a machine without a browser (over SSH, in a container, on a headless host), use the cross-device flow instead:
The CLI prints a URL and a short code. Open the URL on any device, check that the page shows the same code, and choose Authorize.
Authorizing gives that terminal full access to your Kanaeru account. If you didn’t just run kana login, choose Reject.
Other auth commands:

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Machine credentials

A machine connected through the Agent Manager already holds a machine credential, and kana falls back to it when no one has run kana login. A personal login always takes precedence. kana status tells you which one is in use: Auth: user login (kana login) or Auth: machine bridge (from machine connect). That’s why a coding agent running on a connected machine can use kana straight away.

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Choose a workspace

Most commands act on the active workspace.
A selection can be scoped:
  • kana workspace use <id> --local keeps the choice inside the current Git worktree, so different checkouts can point at different workspaces. kana workspace clear-local removes it.
  • kana workspace use <id> --global stores it in the shared CLI state.
  • kana --workspace <id> <command> uses a workspace for one command only. Put the flag before the command.

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Files and environment variables

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Next steps

Command reference

Every command, argument, and flag.

Talk to kana from the terminal

Send messages, steer, answer questions, and approve permission requests.