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Cosine

Overview

The Cosine CLI (command cos) is a powerful terminal interface that brings Cosine’s AI capabilities directly to your local development environment. With the CLI, you can have intelligent conversations about your code, automate tasks, and leverage external tools through the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

What You Can Do

Section titled “What You Can Do”
  • Interactive AI Sessions: Start a terminal user interface (TUI) session where you can chat with Cosine about your codebase
  • One-shot Tasks: Run single prompts without entering interactive mode
  • Repository Analysis: Automatically analyze your repo structure and get AI-generated context files
  • Browser Automation: Control Chrome for web-based tasks via CDP
  • MCP Integration: Connect external tools and APIs through Model Context Protocol servers
  • Skills Management: Install and manage reusable skill packages
  • Reasoning Control: Choose faster or deeper model behavior depending on the task

Choose How Cosine Works

Section titled “Choose How Cosine Works”

The CLI supports four operating modes so you can match Cosine’s behavior to the task in front of you:

  • Manual: Stay in control and approve actions step by step
  • Auto: Let Cosine execute work directly for faster iteration
  • Plan: Have Cosine investigate first and propose a plan before execution
  • Swarm: Split complex work across multiple agents in parallel

See CLI Modes for the full behavior of each mode and when to use them.

Tune How Deeply Cosine Thinks

Section titled “Tune How Deeply Cosine Thinks”

You can also change the model’s reasoning level for a session. Lower levels respond faster, while higher levels spend more time planning and checking edge cases.

See Reasoning for when to use none, low, medium, high, xhigh, or adaptive.

Start Here

Section titled “Start Here”
  • Quickstart — Install the CLI, sign in, and run your first task
  • Common Terms — Learn the key CLI terms used across the docs
  • Commands — Learn the main commands and look up global flags
  • Reasoning — Learn how reasoning changes speed, depth, and model behavior
  • Install & Authenticate — Full install methods, dependencies, and sign-in options

Most Common Commands

Section titled “Most Common Commands”
CommandUse it when
cos startYou want to open the TUI or run a one-shot task
cos loginYou need to sign in to your Cosine account
cos initYou want to set up repo-local CLI config files
cos mcpYou want to add or manage MCP servers
cos skillsYou want to install or manage reusable skills

For command syntax and examples, see Commands.

Typical Flows

Section titled “Typical Flows”

Start an interactive session

Section titled “Start an interactive session”
Terminal window
cos start

Run a one-shot task

Section titled “Run a one-shot task”
Terminal window
cos start --prompt "Explain the main function in main.go"

Configuration

Section titled “Configuration”

The CLI reads configuration from multiple sources (in order of precedence):

  1. Command-line flags (highest priority)
  2. Repository config (.cosine.toml or cosine.toml)
  3. User config (~/.cosine.toml)
  4. Environment variables
  5. Defaults (lowest priority)

Profile-specific configs

Section titled “Profile-specific configs”

You can create profile-specific configs:

  • cosine.<profile>.toml in repo (project-specific)
  • ~/.cosine.<profile>.toml in home (user-specific)

Use with: cos --profile <profile> start

Next Steps

Section titled “Next Steps”