Installation and terminals

Requirements

• Node.js 22.18.0 or newer.
• Linux or macOS. Windows is currently untested, not declared unsupported.
• Access to a supported model provider. Subscription-backed access and API-key billing are different; see authentication.

Install

bun

bun add -g @zaly/cli

npm

npm install -g @zaly/cli

pnpm

pnpm add -g @zaly/cli

Check the installation with zaly --version and available flags with zaly --help. Bun is an installation option; it is not required for the normal npm installation.

To update, run the same install command again. To uninstall, use npm uninstall -g @zaly/cli, bun remove -g @zaly/cli, or pnpm remove -g @zaly/cli, matching your installer.

Terminal support

Terminal	zaly experience
Ghostty	Full inline image support through the Kitty Graphics Protocol (KGP).
Kitty	Full inline image support through KGP.
Alacritty	Good text-only experience.
WezTerm	Good text-only experience.
iTerm2	Good text-only experience.

This describes zaly's current integration, not every feature those terminals support. Images require both terminal support and ui.images enabled. Sending an image to a vision-capable model is separate from displaying images inline.

Modified keys, clipboard access, and graphics can behave differently through SSH, multiplexers, or terminal-specific configuration. If a shortcut does not arrive correctly, use the corresponding slash command where available.

Display modes

The default is fullscreen. To preserve native terminal scrollback instead:

zaly --mode scrollback

Or set ui.mode in configuration. No terminal customization is required to get started.