DevThink

DevThink is a provider-neutral AI development workbench with a terminal CLI, an embedded local gateway and a static web workbench. The public source lives in the DevThink repository; DevThink remains the product name.

Security boundary. DevThink uses official provider APIs and credentials supplied explicitly by the user. It does not capture browser cookies, store browser sessions, solve CAPTCHAs, automate browser authentication or bypass anti-bot controls.

Surface	Capability
CLI	Streaming chat, provider and model discovery, 20 modes, local sessions, memory, pairing and credential-free snapshot export.
Local gateway	Loopback HTTP and SSE service for health, provider models, workspaces, sessions, tabs and normalized chat streaming.
Provider layer	OpenAI-compatible, Anthropic Messages and Google Generate Content protocols with user-configured endpoints.
Local state	Atomic JSON compatibility records plus SQLite mirrors under ~/.config/devthink/.
Workbench	Static React application under web/, with addressable workspace/session/tab/section routes and local one-time pairing.

Installation

DevThink uses Bun for development and self-contained binary builds. The CLI keeps non-secret preferences in devthink.json and user-provided official credentials in a separate auth.json file.

npm install --global @wenathlan/devthink
devthink init
devthink --help

bun install
bun run devthink.ts init
bun run devthink.ts --help

devthink auth login zai --token "$ZAI_API_KEY" --kind api-key
devthink config activeModel glm-5
devthink chat --prompt "Summarize this repository in three points."

On Linux, the default local paths are:

File	Purpose
~/.config/devthink/devthink.json	Non-secret preferences and provider endpoint configuration.
~/.config/devthink/auth.json	Explicit official API keys, bearer values or OAuth records; file mode is 0600.
~/.config/devthink/devthink.sqlite	Local workspaces, sessions, tabs and messages.

The examples below are deliberately inert and must be replaced locally by an official credential supplied by the user.

{
  "version": 1,
  "providers": {
    "zai": {
      "kind": "api-key",
      "value": "example_api_key_not_a_secret",
      "updatedAt": "2026-08-19T00:00:00.000Z"
    }
  }
}

Provider endpoints

DevThink does not use a separate proxy module. A provider-specific endpoint belongs in providers.<id>.baseUrl within the user-owned devthink.json file.

{
  "activeProvider": "zai",
  "activeModel": "glm-5",
  "gateway": { "mode": "embedded", "stream": true },
  "providers": {
    "zai": {
      "baseUrl": "https://api.z.ai/api/paas/v4",
      "transport": "openai-compatible"
    }
  },
  "web": { "enabled": true }
}

Provider family	Protocol
OpenAI, Z.AI, Qwen, OpenRouter, DeepSeek, Groq, Mistral, xAI, Ollama and Xiaomi MiMo	OpenAI-compatible streaming.
Anthropic	Messages streaming.
Google Gemini	Generate Content streaming.

CLI commands

devthink init
devthink chat --provider <id> --model <id> --prompt <text>
devthink providers
devthink models --provider <id>
devthink modes
devthink config [key] [value]
devthink auth login <provider> --token <credential> [--kind api-key|bearer|oauth]
devthink auth status
devthink auth clear <provider>
devthink auth migrate
devthink identity
devthink pair create [--web-url <url>] [--gateway <url>]
devthink pair revoke
devthink sync status
devthink sync export
devthink gateway status
devthink sessions list
devthink sessions export <id> --format markdown
devthink serve
devthink interactive

devthink serve listens only on the local loopback interface. The web workbench must pair through a short-lived, one-time code before a browser origin can access local records. Provider credentials remain local and are never sent to GitHub Pages.

Workbench and GitHub Pages

The workbench lives directly under web/, with no web/src or web/client/src nesting. Its route preserves the same stable identifiers used by the CLI and local gateway.

/w/:workspaceId/s/:sessionId/t/:tabId/:sectionId

cd web
pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm check
pnpm build

The GitHub Pages build is static. It never embeds a provider credential or remote database. To interact with the CLI, users run devthink serve locally and pair the browser explicitly.

TypeScript documentation

The public docs/ directory contains compact category.ts.md collections. Legacy non-TypeScript executable documentation was rewritten as typed, JSDoc-described TypeScript contracts. The root code integrates the safe parts of those contracts: bounded retry behavior, error redaction, exact allowed-origin matching, secure remote-endpoint validation and Pages base-path normalization.

Collection	Focus
auth.ts.md	Official credential shapes and inert examples.
providers.ts.md	Protocol adapters, retry and error redaction.
gateway.ts.md	Local gateway request and origin contract.
storage.ts.md	Credential-free local persistence and sync boundary.
web.ts.md	Static base-path and addressable route contract.

Validation and release

bun run check
bun run build:binary

cd web
pnpm check
pnpm build

The release workflow builds Bun binaries for Linux x64, macOS arm64 and Windows x64. The Pages workflow validates and publishes the static workbench with a repository-scoped base path and SPA fallback; the workbench is not distributed as a separate npm package.

References

[1] Bun documentation

[2] Anthropic streaming documentation

[3] Google Gemini Generate Content

[4] Z.AI API documentation

[5] Xiaomi MiMo quick start