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.
