- Category
- AI Agents
- Rank
- No. 1713Tools index
Previous survey · No. 1691 ·
- Pricing
- Open Source
- Type
- AGENT
- Use case
- Coding · Workflow Automation
- Interfaces
- CLI
- GitHub
- 8 stars
- Latest release
- v0.14.0
- Date
About
Kana is an open-source, single-binary terminal AI agent for coding, system workflows, and tool-driven productivity. It offers an interactive TUI that keeps reasoning, diffs, and execution together, a headless "kana exec" mode for scripts and CI pipelines, durable memory across sessions, and reusable templates and subagents, all without telemetry.
At a glance
Kana is a terminal coding agent that can retain project conventions between sessions. It is worth a scratch trial if you want to inspect tool calls and see which project rules carry over after a restart.
Good fit
macOS and Linux developers who want a terminal agent with configurable model endpoints and persistent context.
Consider something else when
Skip it if shell commands and file access need to be isolated from your host.
Start here
In a disposable workspace, give Kana a harmless project convention and inspect it with /memory. Start a fresh session and check whether it recalls the convention before relying on it for real work.
Cost and requirements
MIT-licensed. The project lists prebuilt binaries for macOS and Linux on arm64 and x64. You need a configured model endpoint and any credentials it requires. Hosted providers may charge for calls.
Limits to know
Session history and memory stay on disk and may contain sensitive material. The model endpoint receives request context. Approvals are per-tool decisions and commands still run with your host permissions.
Sources checked 2026-11-05. Source-based assessment.
Why it made the leaderboard
Offers a terminal coding-agent alternative built around persistent memory and no telemetry for developers who want a Claude Code/Codex-style workflow without usage data leaving their machine.
Tags
Tech Stack
Comments (0)
No comments yet
Editorially curated, with community endorsements as a secondary signal. Corrections welcome.