kode tui — Launch the Terminal User Interface

kode tui launches Kode’s Terminal UI, downloading the binary from GitHub Releases on first run. Supports —port, —hostname, and —mdns flags.

kode tui launches Kode’s interactive Terminal User Interface — a full-featured front end for browsing your codebase, running tasks, reviewing Ghost Branch results, and inspecting verification output. On first run, Kode downloads the TUI binary from GitHub Releases and caches it in ~/.kode/tui/. Subsequent runs start instantly from the cached binary. You can also launch the TUI simply by running kode with no arguments.

Synopsis

kode tui

What it does

1. Checks the cache — looks for a versioned TUI binary in ~/.kode/tui/bin/
2. Downloads if missing — fetches the platform-specific binary from GitHub Releases and writes it to ~/.kode/tui/bin/kode-tui (or kode-tui.exe on Windows)
3. Launches the TUI — starts the binary, passing through port, hostname, and mDNS flags; the TUI binary connects back to kode via the KODE_BIN environment variable
4. Logs TUI output — redirects the TUI’s stderr to ~/.kode/tui/kode-tui.log so diagnostic lines do not interfere with the terminal screen buffer

Flags

Flag	Type	Default	Description
--port	int	auto-assigned	HTTP server port for the TUI
--hostname	string	unset	HTTP server hostname
--mdns	bool	false	Advertise the TUI over mDNS for local network access

Examples

Default launch

kode tui

First-run behavior

On first run (or when the cached binary does not match the current Kode version), kode tui downloads the platform binary from GitHub Releases:

Downloading Kode TUI binary from GitHub...

The binary is saved to ~/.kode/tui/bin/kode-tui and a version marker is written to ~/.kode/tui/.kode-tui-version. Future runs skip the download and start immediately.

The download URL is constructed as:

https://github.com/sicario-labs/kode/releases/download/v<version>/kode-tui-<os>-<arch>

Where <os> is linux, darwin, or windows, and <arch> is x64 or arm64.

Environment overrides

Variable	Description
KODE_TUI_DIR	Override the directory where the TUI binary is cached (default: ~/.kode/tui)
KODE_TUI_BUNDLE_URL	Override the full download URL for the TUI binary (useful for air-gapped environments or mirrors)

TUI log file

TUI stderr output is written to ~/.kode/tui/kode-tui.log. If the TUI behaves unexpectedly or crashes, inspect this file for diagnostic output:

tail -f ~/.kode/tui/kode-tui.log

If the TUI download fails due to a network restriction or proxy, set KODE_TUI_BUNDLE_URL to an alternative mirror URL or a local file path and re-run kode tui.

Running kode with no arguments is equivalent to kode tui. Both commands go through the same binary resolution and download path.

Related

• kode loop — run tasks from the command line without the TUI
• kode mcp serve — expose Kode as an MCP server for Claude Desktop