Codebuff

Codebuff is an open-source AI coding agent that lives in your terminal. You point it at a repo, describe a change, and it edits multiple files, runs tests, and iterates until the task passes or it gets stuck.

What is Codebuff?

Codebuff is a command-line coding agent from the Codebuff team, distributed on GitHub under an open-source license. Unlike a chat sidebar, it can read your whole project, plan a sequence of edits, and apply them without you copying code back and forth. It supports Node and Python projects out of the box and works with any model you plug in.

Product Features

• Multi-file edits: applies coordinated changes across a repository, not single snippets.
• Bring your own key: works with Anthropic, OpenAI or a local model endpoint.
• Command execution: runs tests, linters and build steps, then reads the output.
• Interactive loop: shows a plan before editing and lets you approve or redirect.
• Open source: the client is on GitHub, so you can inspect how it calls tools.

Product Highlights

The approval step is the part worth noting. Codebuff prints its intended edits before touching files, which matters when an agent wants to rename a function used in forty places.

Downsides are real. Larger refactors can burn through tokens quickly, and on a big monorepo it sometimes loses track of which package it is editing. Set a token budget before you start.

Use Cases

• Adding a field to an API and updating every call site.
• Fixing a failing test suite by reading the error and patching the code.
• Upgrading a dependency across a project and fixing breaks.
• Running repetitive codebase-wide refactors from one prompt.
• Trying agents without paying for a hosted IDE subscription.

Is Codebuff free?

The client is free and open source. You either pay for your own model API usage or subscribe to a hosted plan; there is no published all-you-can-eat flat rate, so costs scale with how much the agent runs.

Quick Summary

• Codebuff is an open-source terminal agent, not an IDE plugin.
• Edits multiple files and runs your tests.
• Works with your own model keys.
• Token costs add up on large refactors.