What is ACP

The ACP protocol is a protocol between clients and Agents, usable for integrating the CLI with all kinds of editors — see Agent Client Protocol. Qoder CLI CN implements this protocol standard, so through this feature Qoder CLI CN can be integrated into any client that implements the ACP protocol.

Features

Run modes

Two run modes are supported:

Default mode: equivalent to the CLI's default startup mode, running with the default permission settings.
Bypass Permissions mode: equivalent to the CLI's --yolo mode — skips permission checks and executes tools automatically.

Slash commands

The currently supported commands are listed below; each behaves the same as the corresponding command in the CLI:

/init: perform project understanding and generate the AGENTS.md memory file
/memory: show or refresh memory information
/about: show version information
/help: show the available ACP commands

Other features

Feature	Supported	Notes
Built-in tools	✅	The same built-in tools as in the CLI
Subagent	✅	The same Subagent capabilities as in the CLI
MCP Server	✅	The same Stdio, SSE, and Streamable HTTP MCP support as in the CLI
Permission configuration	✅	The same permission configuration capabilities as in the CLI
Context compression	✅	The same context compression mechanism as in the CLI
Multimodal	✅	Images supported
File operations / Terminal	✅	Uses IDE-side capabilities via the ACP protocol

How to start

Before starting, make sure Qoder CLI CN is installed — see Getting Started with Qoder CLI CN. The supported operating systems and CPU architectures are:

Supported operating systems: macOS, Linux, Windows
Supported CPU architectures: arm64, amd64 (Windows arm64 is not supported yet)

Starting the ACP server

If you are developing an ACP client and want to use Qoder CLI CN as the Agent Server, you can launch the CLI directly by command. Just pass the --acp flag when starting Qoder CLI CN; the CLI starts as an ACP server, and ACP clients can communicate with it over standard input/output.

qodercn --acp

Starting in Zed IDE

To integrate Qoder CLI CN with Zed IDE, simply add the following extension configuration to the Zed configuration file to add Qoder CLI CN support in Zed IDE. Once configured, Qoder CLI CN can be selected when creating a Thread.

macOS / Linux configuration

{
   ...
   "agent_servers": {
      "Qoder CLI CN": {
          "type": "custom",
          "command": "qodercn",
          "args": ["--acp"]
      }
   }
}

Windows configuration

{
   ...
   "agent_servers": {
      "Qoder CLI CN": {
          "type": "custom",
          "command": "~\\AppData\\Roaming\\npm\\qodercn.cmd",
          "args": ["--acp"]
      }
   }
}

Note: in Zed version 0.215.2 and earlier, type does not need to be configured. The Zed IDE configuration file paths on different operating systems are:

macOS: ~/.config/zed/settings.json
Linux: ~/.config/zed/settings.json
Windows: ~\AppData\Roaming\Zed\settings.json

Signing in and using

ACP clients use the same sign-in state as Qoder CLI CN; currently you need to sign in through Qoder CLI CN. If you have already signed in and used Qoder CLI CN, the ACP client works without signing in again. If you have never signed in to Qoder CLI CN, enter the following command in the terminal to open the sign-in flow:

qodercn login

Qoder CLI CN starts the browser sign-in flow, prints the login URL, and opens the browser automatically when available. Follow the terminal prompts to complete authentication. Qoder CLI CN detects the QODERCN_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN environment variable at startup to complete authentication, so an ACP client can configure this environment variable to have Qoder CLI CN sign in automatically. Below is an example Zed IDE configuration that adds the Qoder Access Token environment variable.

{
   ...
   "agent_servers": {
      "Qoder CLI CN": {
          "env": {
              "QODERCN_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "your_personal_access_token_here"
          },
          "command": "qodercn",
          "args": ["--acp"]
      }
   }
}

You can get a Personal Access Token on this page: https://qoder.cn/account/integrations

​What is ACP

​Features

​Run modes

​Slash commands

​Other features

​How to start

​Starting the ACP server

​Starting in Zed IDE

​Signing in and using

​Sign in via Qoder CLI CN

​Sign in via environment variable