zai-cli
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 chainingUse for visual content analysis, web search, page reading, or GitHub exploration. Requires Z_AI_API_KEY.
When & Why to Use This Skill
ZAI CLI is a comprehensive AI-powered command-line interface that integrates multimodal vision analysis, real-time web search, and GitHub repository exploration into a single developer workflow. By leveraging GLM-4.6V and MCP tool discovery, it enables developers to perform complex tasks like UI-to-code conversion, visual error diagnosis, and automated web-to-markdown extraction directly from the terminal, significantly enhancing productivity and context-gathering efficiency.
Use Cases
- Visual Debugging & UI-to-Code: Transform UI screenshots into functional code snippets or use vision-based analysis to diagnose front-end errors and layout issues.
- Real-time Web Research & Extraction: Perform filtered web searches and instantly convert complex web pages into clean markdown for documentation or LLM context feeding.
- GitHub Repository Intelligence: Search and read code across GitHub repositories to understand library structures, find specific implementations, or explore new codebases without leaving the CLI.
- Agentic Tool Orchestration: Utilize TypeScript tool chaining and MCP (Model Context Protocol) discovery to build and execute complex automated workflows and raw tool calls.
| name | zai-cli |
|---|---|
| description | | |
| - 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 |
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
# Analyze an image
npx zai-cli vision analyze ./screenshot.png "What errors do you see?"
# Search the web
npx zai-cli search "React 19 new features" --count 5
# Read a web page
npx zai-cli read https://docs.example.com/api
npx zai-cli read https://docs.example.com/api --with-images-summary --no-gfm
# Explore a GitHub repo
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
# Check setup
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.