| name | zai-cli |
| description | Z.AI CLI providing:
- Vision: image/video analysis, OCR, UI-to-code, error diagnosis (GLM-4.6V)
- Search: real-time web search with domain/recency filtering
- Reader: web page to markdown extraction
- Repo: GitHub code search and reading via ZRead
- Tools: MCP tool discovery and raw calls
- Code: TypeScript tool chaining
Use for visual content analysis, web search, page reading, or GitHub exploration. Requires Z_AI_API_KEY.
|
ZAI CLI
Access Z.AI capabilities via npx zai-cli. The CLI is self-documenting - use --help at any level.
Setup
export Z_AI_API_KEY="your-api-key"
Get a key at: https://z.ai/manage-apikey/apikey-list
Commands
| Command | Purpose | Help |
|---|
| vision | Analyze images, screenshots, videos | --help for 8 subcommands |
| search | Real-time web search | --help for filtering options |
| read | Fetch web pages as markdown | --help for format options |
| repo | GitHub code search and reading | --help for tree/search/read |
| tools | List available MCP tools | |
| tool | Show tool schema | |
| call | Raw MCP tool invocation | |
| code | TypeScript tool chaining | |
| doctor | Check setup and connectivity | |
Quick Start
npx zai-cli vision analyze ./screenshot.png "What errors do you see?"
npx zai-cli search "React 19 new features" --count 5
npx zai-cli read https://docs.example.com/api
npx zai-cli read https://docs.example.com/api --with-images-summary --no-gfm
npx zai-cli repo search facebook/react "server components"
npx zai-cli repo search openai/codex "config" --language en
npx zai-cli repo tree openai/codex --path codex-rs --depth 2
npx zai-cli doctor
Output
Default: data-only (raw output for token efficiency).
Use --output-format json for { success, data, timestamp } wrapping.
Advanced
For raw MCP tool calls (tools, tool, call), Code Mode, and performance tuning (cache/retries),
see references/advanced.md.
