ZAI CLI
Access Z.AI capabilities via npx zai-cli. The CLI is self-documenting - use --help at any level.
Setup
bash
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
bash
# 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.