Crush Freemium

Charm's terminal-first AI coding agent with a slick TUI and multi-model support

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Crush is an open-source AI coding agent that runs entirely in your terminal, built by Charm (the Bubble Tea team). It reads your project, edits files and runs commands using your own API keys for Claude, GPT, Gemini or local models.

What is Crush?

Crush is a command-line coding assistant. You launch it with crush inside a project folder, and it indexes the codebase, then answers questions or makes edits through a chat interface drawn in the terminal. It shipped in 2025 as Charm’s follow-up to their earlier tools and competes with Cursor and Claude Code but without a GUI.

The pitch is simple: no IDE plugin, no browser tab. Just a fast TUI that works over SSH.

Product Features

  • Bring your own model: supports Anthropic, OpenAI, Groq, Google and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including local Ollama.
  • Terminal UI: built on Bubble Tea, so it renders smoothly and stays responsive even on large repos.
  • Project context: a per-project crush.json remembers the model, tools and rules you picked.
  • Tool use: can view, edit and create files, run shell commands and search the web depending on the model.
  • Session history: conversations are stored so you can resume with crush --continue.
  • LSP awareness: pulls diagnostics from language servers to catch broken edits.

Product Highlights

  • Runs anywhere a terminal runs, including remote servers over SSH.
  • MIT licensed and free to use; you only pay your model provider.
  • Fast startup compared with Electron-based coding apps.
  • Config is a plain JSON file you can commit or share across a team.

Who should use Crush, and who should not?

Crush suits developers who already live in tmux and neovim and want an agent without a second window. It also works well on headless boxes where you cannot install a heavy editor. Skip it if you rely on visual diffs, inline autocomplete or a graphical file tree — the TUI gives you a text diff at best, and beginners often find the keybindings awkward.

Use Cases

  • Refactoring a function across a repo while you stay in the shell.
  • Debugging a failing test on a remote server over SSH.
  • Writing small scripts and CLI tools without leaving the terminal.
  • Drafting migration files for a database schema change.
  • Exploring an unfamiliar codebase with natural-language questions.

Quick Summary

  • Crush is a free, open-source terminal AI coding agent from Charm.
  • It supports any OpenAI-compatible model, so you control cost and data.
  • Best for terminal-native developers; weak for people who want inline autocomplete.
  • Config lives in crush.json per project and can be version-controlled.
  • Install via Homebrew, npm or a direct binary from GitHub.

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