Terminal coding agent with skills and MCP

Why Qwen Code?

• Agentic out of the box — Auto-Memory, Auto-Skills, SubAgents, Agent Teams, and MCP. Dynamic workflows, zero setup.
• Open-source, inside and out — The framework and the Qwen models are open-source. They evolve together. No vendor lock-in.
• Multi-protocol — Supports OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and Qwen APIs. Any third-party provider or local model (Ollama / vLLM). Switch at runtime.
• Beyond the terminal — IDE plugins, Desktop app, Web UI, SDKs, and chat integrations (Telegram / DingTalk / WeChat / Feishu).

[!TIP] Qwen Code is actively iterating on itself — using its own agent and models to file issues, submit PRs, review code, and run tests. Powered by the community, driven by AI.

Installation

Linux / macOS:

curl -fsSL https://qwen-code-assets.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/installation/install-qwen-standalone.sh | bash

Windows:

irm https://qwen-code-assets.oss-cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/installation/install-qwen-standalone.ps1 | iex

Restart your terminal after installation to ensure environment variables take effect.

npm install -g @qwen-code/qwen-code@latest

brew install qwen-code

Quick Start

Open a terminal in your project and start Qwen Code:

cd /path/to/your-project
qwen

Inside the session, run /auth to configure your provider and API key. Then try:

Explain this repository and show me where to start.

See the Authentication Guide and Settings Reference for detailed setup.

How to Use Qwen Code

Choose the interface that fits your workflow:

For automation and custom integrations:

• Headless — Run qwen -p "..." in scripts, CI/CD, or batch jobs.
• SDKs — Build with TypeScript, Python, or Java.
• Daemon — Run qwen serve to connect clients over HTTP + SSE (ACP). (experimental) Daemon guide.

import asyncio

from qwen_code_sdk import is_sdk_result_message, query


async def main() -> None:
    result = query(
        "Summarize the repository layout.",
        {
            "cwd": "/path/to/project",
            "path_to_qwen_executable": "qwen",
        },
    )

    async for message in result:
        if is_sdk_result_message(message):
            print(message["result"])


asyncio.run(main())

Capabilities

If you know Claude Code, you already know Qwen Code — and then some. We've put significant effort into bringing Qwen Code to feature parity with Claude Code, improving both breadth and reliability across the board.

Qwen Code Evaluation

Evaluation Configuration

Scores by Qwen Code Version

Avg Score Trend

Ecosystem

• Qwen Code Desktop — Official desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux

• AionUi — A modern GUI for command-line AI tools including Qwen Code

• Gemini CLI Desktop — A cross-platform desktop/web/mobile UI for Qwen Code

• 🦞 Qwen Code Claw — Let other agents (Claude, Codex, etc.) delegate coding tasks to Qwen Code via ACP. Paste this prompt into your agent:

Use Qwen Code as a coding agent. First, fetch and read this skill reference:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/QwenLM/qwen-code/refs/heads/main/.qwen/skills/qwen-code-claw/SKILL.md
Then follow the instructions inside to install, authenticate, and use Qwen Code via acpx for all coding tasks.

• Aliyun Model Studio CLI — Official CLI for Aliyun's AI platform (bailian-cli). Extends Qwen Code with image/video generation, knowledge retrieval, app orchestration, and model deployment

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Acknowledgments

This project was originally based on Google Gemini CLI v0.8.2. We gratefully acknowledge the Gemini CLI team's excellent work. Starting from Qwen Code v0.1, we stopped syncing with upstream and began independent development as a multi-protocol, multi-platform agent framework with deep integrations for Qwen models and beyond.