- Category
- Developer Tools
- Rank
- No. 508Tools index
- Pricing
- Open Source
- Type
- TOOL
- Builder
- openclaw
- GitHub
- 3.2k stars
- Latest release
- v0.15.1
- Date
About
OpenClaw's headless CLI client for stateful Agent Client Protocol (ACP) sessions — connect from scripts and CI without a chat UI.
What it does
acpx gives automation a common command surface for coding agents that speak ACP. It can preserve conversation context between invocations, run stateless tasks, queue follow-up prompts, stream structured events, and execute multi-step TypeScript workflows with checkpoints and deterministic actions.
Why it's ranked here
The design covers more than prompt submission. Persistent named workstreams, explicit session creation, NDJSON events, permission policies, and embeddable runtime and flow modules make it credible infrastructure for agent orchestration. Its pre-1.0 status and external agent prerequisites keep the verdict measured.
What's good
Automation receives structured ACP events for reasoning, tool calls, diffs, errors, and completion state. Permission handling supports read approval, blanket denial or approval, rule-based escalation, and safe noninteractive behavior. Sessions can persist context, queue busy-turn follow-ups, and remain scoped to a project directory.
Tradeoffs
The command and runtime interfaces are explicitly evolving before 1.0. Node.js 22.13 or newer is required. Upstream coding agents generally need separate installation and authentication. Persistent state lives locally, while workflow support expects TypeScript, so this is not a hosted orchestration service.
How to use it well
Use acpx when scripts, CI jobs, or orchestrators need repeatable access to several ACP-compatible coding agents. Prefer named persistent sessions for continuing investigations, stateless runs for isolated jobs, and NDJSON for machine consumers. Choose something else if you need a chat interface, hosted agents, or bundled authentication.
Technical notes+
package.json defines an ESM npm package built from src/cli.ts, src/runtime.ts, and src/flows.ts for Node 22, with declaration output and public runtime and flow exports. src/cli-core.ts uses Commander, resolves output policy early, and normalizes errors across text, quiet, and JSON modes. src/filesystem.ts confines absolute paths to the configured working subtree and gates writes through permission policy. src/permissions.ts combines mode ordering, per-tool rules, interactive prompts, noninteractive denial or failure, and escalation metadata. src/runtime.ts wraps an AcpRuntimeManager, persists encoded handles, exposes health probes and session controls, and streams turn events. package.json runs formatting, type checking, linting, builds, viewer checks, Node tests, coverage thresholds, and mutation testing.
Observed
- License
- MIT
- Primary language
- TypeScript
- Packaging
- ESM npm package with a global acpx command and public runtime and flow exports
- Install surface
- Global npm installation or one-off execution through npx
- Runtime requirement
- Node.js 22.13 or newer
- Interfaces
- Command-line client plus embeddable runtime and workflow modules
- Agent support
- Built-in profiles for Codex, Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and OpenClaw, plus custom ACP server commands
- Quality gates
- Formatting, type checking, linting, builds, tests, coverage thresholds, and mutation testing are configured
Read from README.md, package.json, src/cli.ts, src/flows.ts, src/types.ts, src/errors.ts, src/runtime.ts, src/version.ts, src/cli-core.ts, src/cli-public.ts, src/filesystem.ts, src/mcp-servers.ts, src/permissions.ts, src/perf-metrics.ts, src/async-control.ts.
What it can do
Establish stateful ACP sessions
Connection parameters and authentication credentials → Active ACP session connection
Execute commands in headless mode
Command-line arguments and parameters → Command execution results
Integrate with CI/CD pipelines
CI/CD configuration and scripts → Automated workflow execution
Connect to OpenClaw services without UI
Service endpoints and connection details → Direct service access and responses
Maintain persistent agent sessions
Session state data and agent context → Continuous session state across operations
Execute scripted agent interactions
Script files and automation parameters → Scripted operation results and logs
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Editorially curated, with community endorsements as a secondary signal. Corrections welcome.