privibe

CLI coding agent for private, local-first development.

privibe is a fork of Mistral Vibe reworked to not do any call back home of any kind and then run against local models first, I want to be able to use it and know it will not be sending data of any kind anywhere.

The cloud/account machinery is gone, the Mistral SDK is now an optional extra, and a lot of work has gone into making it fast and pleasant to use against a local llama.cpp server.

If you want the original, hosted, Mistral-centric experience, use upstream Mistral Vibe. If you want a small coding agent you can point at your own local llama.cpp server, this is that.

Step-by-step version of this demo: docs/getting-started.md.

Resuming and switching between sessions, plus context files in action: the lets-document skill compiles what one session learned into a context file, and a second, unrelated session picks up from that knowledge without redoing the research (played at 4x):

Resuming a session with its KV cache restored from disk: with the companion llama-server build, evicted conversations are saved to disk and reloaded on resume, so picking an old session back up does not reprocess the whole conversation:

Note on backends: this fork is developed and tested against a local llama.cpp server (via its OpenAI-compatible API). The Anthropic and Mistral backend adapters inherited from upstream are still in the code but are not actively tested here — treat them as unverified.

Install

Requires Python ≥ 3.12 and uv.

git clone https://github.com/alainnothere/privibe.git
cd privibe
uv sync

Run

I set up an alias on .bashrc

alias privibe='uv run --project /yourPathToPrivibeHere/privibe privibe'

so you can later just use it with privibe from whenever you are, or inside privibe folder with

uv run privibe

On first run it writes a config to ~/.privibe/config.toml. Point the model entries at your server (e.g. a local llama.cpp instance) and you're going.

There's also an ACP entrypoint for editor integrations:

uv run privibe-acp

Run on windows

For the most part... exactly the same, clone the source and uv run privibe... I use it daily on git bash and works correctly, I have also tried powershell and I know it works.

How it differs from Mistral Vibe

Local-first

• Built around a local llama.cpp server (OpenAI-compatible API). The Mistral SDK is an optional extra (uv sync --extra mistral), not a requirement, and there's no API-key onboarding gate.
• The upstream Anthropic and Mistral backend adapters are still present but are not tested in this fork (see the note at the top).
• Removed the cloud and account features (nuage/teleport), telemetry, tracing, the update notifier, plan offers, data-retention, and remote auth — along with their dead code and tests. De-branded from Mistral Vibe throughout. If you find anything calling home is not intentional, I miss it, please create an issue and we'll nuke that code into outer space....

Tuned for local llama.cpp / KV cache

• Conversation state is held in a structure (ConversationList) that keeps the prefix immutable, so the server's prompt/KV cache stays valid across turns.
• KV cache is preserved on --resume/--continue by restoring the original system prompt instead of regenerating it (which would invalidate the cache).
• Context-size auto-detection with a /detect-context-size toggle (re-runs on model swap), and an opt-in model warmup.
• Per-message reasoning effort: /effort cycles off/low/medium/xhigh for new messages without invalidating the KV cache. Needs the companion llama-server build; stock servers silently ignore the stamps.
• Long sessions stay responsive: the transcript is windowed behind a "Load more" button, and streaming output is render-throttled so drawing keeps up even when the model generates faster than the terminal can paint.
• Tolerates SSE keep-alive pings from newer llama.cpp servers.

Expanded code-editing toolset

• Hashed-line file tools split into explicit single-line, block, and delete operations, plus find_symbol.
• Per-agent file undo stack with a restore_file tool; writes are serialized.
• Tuned for smaller local models: best-effort indent correction on edits, hashed line addresses re-pointed when earlier edits shift them, and naive reads of huge files return a head preview plus guidance instead of flooding the context.
• Cross-dialect path translation (Windows / WSL / Git Bash / Cygwin) with a [paths] config section.
• @-mention file completion backed by a stateless git enumeration.

TUI / UX

• Console mode: --console runs the same agent as a plain-text REPL (no colors, no TUI), including tool output and session resume.
• Rewind: Alt+Up browses your previous messages; fork the conversation from any of them, and optionally restore files to that point (the file restore is gated behind a typed confirmation code).
• Agent steering: queue messages mid-turn instead of cancelling the agent.
• Double-press Ctrl+C to exit (no more accidental one-key quits).
• Clipboard fixes for Linux/X11 terminals, a /autocopy toggle, and a warning when clipboard tools are missing.
• /resume session picker showing the folder and a short preview of each session, with search: type to filter, -word to exclude, results ranked by match. Conversation history is re-rendered on resume.
• File edits show a diff in the TUI.
• Model name + tokens/sec in the context footer.
• Configurable tool-result preview length (/preview-lines), scrollback (/scrollback), and an /llm-debug dump toggle.
• Subagent work is preserved when you cancel mid-execution.

Skills, config, packaging

• Bundled sample skill (lets-document) with auto-discovery and load-error surfacing.
• Model selection skips entries with a missing API-key env var and falls back to a valid model; config upgrades append commented stubs for new keys.
• Datetime-based version stamping; .deb and Windows-zip build scripts.

Configuration

Config lives in ~/.privibe/config.toml (set PRIVIBE_HOME to relocate it). The [paths] section (documented in privibe/core/config/default_config.toml) controls cross-dialect path translation. Models, providers, and feature toggles are set there too; several have in-app /commands (/model, /config, /autocopy, … — see /help). The active model can also be picked for a single run with --model.

License

Apache-2.0. privibe is a fork of Mistral Vibe (© Mistral AI); see LICENSE.