NAME

harvey

SYNOPSIS

harvey OPTIONS

DESCRIPTION

harvey is a terminal agent for local large language models. It was inspired by Claude Code but focused on working with large language models in small computer environments like a Raspberry Pi computer running Raspberry Pi OS. While the inspiration was to run an agent locally with Ollama it can also be run on larger computers like Linux, macOS and Windows systems you find on desktop and laptop computers. It should compile for most systems where Ollama is available and Go is supported (example: *BSD).

harvey looks for HARVEY.md in the current directory and uses it as a system prompt. It then connects to a local Ollama server and starts an interactive chat session. Cloud providers (Anthropic, DeepSeek, Gemini, Mistral, OpenAI) can be added as named routes via /route add.

All file I/O is constrained to the workspace directory (–workdir or “.”). A knowledge base is stored at /agents/knowledge.db and is created automatically on first run. Session recordings (.spmd files) are stored in /agents/sessions/. Both paths can be overridden in agents/harvey.yaml.

Type /help inside the session for available slash commands.

OPTIONS

-h, –help

display this help message

-v, –version

display version information

-l, –license

display license information

-m, –model

MODEL Ollama model to use on startup

–ollama URL

Ollama base URL (default: http://localhost:11434) -w, –workdir DIR

workspace directory (default: current directory)

-r, –record

start a Fountain recording automatically at startup

–record-file FILE

path for the auto-recording file (implies –record)

–continue FILE

load conversation history from a Fountain recording and open the REPL

–replay FILE

re-send every user turn from FILE to the current model and record fresh responses

–replay-output FILE

write replay responses to FILE (default: auto-named timestamped file; implies –replay)

ENVIRONMENT

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY API key for Anthropic Claude (optional, for /route add NAME anthropic://) DEEPSEEK_API_KEY API key for DeepSeek (optional, for /route add NAME deepseek://) GEMINI_API_KEY API key for Google Gemini (optional; GOOGLE_API_KEY also accepted) MISTRAL_API_KEY API key for Mistral (optional, for /route add NAME mistral://) OPENAI_API_KEY API key for OpenAI (optional, for /route add NAME openai://)

All of the above API key variables are filtered out of every child process environment — they are never passed to commands run via ! or /run.

SECURITY

Harvey includes several features for controlling what it can do on your system. All settings survive restart when persisted via the commands below.

Safe mode (/safemode)

Restricts which commands may be executed via ! and /run to an explicit allowlist. Default allowlist: ls, cat, grep, head, tail, wc, find, stat, jq, htmlq, bat, batcat. Subcommands: on, off, status, allow CMD, deny CMD, reset.

Workspace permissions (/permissions)

Fine-grained read/write/exec/delete control per path prefix. Persisted in agents/harvey.yaml under the permissions: key. Subcommands: list [PATH], set PATH PERMS, reset.

Audit log (/audit)

In-memory ring buffer (1000 events) recording every command, file read, file write, and skill invocation. Subcommands: show [N], clear, status.

Security overview (/security)

Displays safe mode state, workspace permissions, and audit buffer status in a single view.

LINE EDITING

Harvey’s prompt supports readline-style editing. All key bindings apply while typing at the “harvey >” prompt.

Navigation:

Left / Right arrows move cursor one character Home / Ctrl+A jump to beginning of line End / Ctrl+E jump to end of line Up / Down arrows cycle through command history

Editing:

Backspace delete character before cursor Ctrl+D delete character under cursor (EOF on empty line) Ctrl+K delete from cursor to end of line

Actions:

Ctrl+C cancel current input and return to prompt Ctrl+X Ctrl+E open $EDITOR (then $VISUAL, then vi) to compose a multi-line prompt; content is submitted when the editor exits