Bringing Your CLI

SwarmADE does not ship its own model. Instead, it orchestrates the AI coding CLIs you already use — the Workers that run locally on your machine. You keep your existing subscriptions, API keys, and tooling; SwarmADE simply bridges them so the Queen can coordinate them into a Swarm. That means your model choices, rate limits, and billing for the models themselves stay with the CLI vendors you already trust.

Your Honey allowance pays for SwarmADE orchestration — Queen planning and Drone reviews. The model usage inside each Worker is billed by your own CLI provider.

Supported Workers

SwarmADE auto-detects these CLIs during the Pre-flight Wizard:

Claude — Anthropic’s coding CLI.
Codex — OpenAI’s coding CLI.
opencode — open-source terminal agent.
Aider — pair-programming in your terminal.
Cline — autonomous coding agent.
Goose — extensible on-machine agent.
Cursor — the Cursor CLI.

How detection works

When you open the Pre-flight Wizard, SwarmADE scans your PATH for each known CLI binary and lists the ones it finds with a counter. Anything already authenticated is ready to enable as a Worker — no extra login inside SwarmADE.

Install and authenticate the CLI

Set up the CLI the normal way, following its own docs, and sign in so it works standalone in your terminal.

Confirm it is on your PATH

SwarmADE only detects binaries reachable on your PATH. Verify one is visible:


command -v claude && claude --version

If the command prints a path and a version, SwarmADE will detect it. If it prints nothing, fix your PATH or reinstall the CLI, then reopen the Wizard.

Enable it as a Worker

Back in the Pre-flight Wizard, the detected CLI appears in the Workers list. Enable it, pick a model variant if offered, and it joins your Swarm.

A CLI must run cleanly on its own in your terminal before SwarmADE can bridge it. If authentication is broken at the CLI level, the Worker will fail when the Queen tries to drive it.

Next steps

CLI bridging setup Local PTY model

To understand how SwarmADE actually talks to each CLI, see CLI bridging setup and the Local PTY model.