Introduction

Vibe Action is a command router that executes shell commands and LLM prompts via simple YAML pipelines.

Why Vibe Action

⚡ One command = complex pipeline — chain shell scripts and LLM calls into a single action
🔗 Tag system — connect steps via {tag} references with automatic dependency graph
🔧 Modifiers — 20+ inline value transformations with arguments
🔀 When/Then — conditional execution in YAML without shell scripts
🌳 AST parsing — {tag|ast} auto-detects language from file, {tag|ast:rs} for explicit
🖥️ System tags — 15 built-in tags: {system_clipboard}, {system_dir_pwd}, {system_os} and more
👁️ Vision support — screenshot description, person identification, image from URL or clipboard
🌐 Fetch — load and summarize web pages, PDFs, images via load and text modifiers
📦 Scan — scan codebase and export AST as structured JSON
🧪 Benchmarks — automatic testing of all actions with timing and output validation
⚡ Action cache — instant startup via snapshot-based validation
🤖 Batch LLM — parallel execution across cluster nodes with role-based routing (tiny, small, medium, large, vision)
✅ Type-safe — validate outputs with expect: string | list and regex check
🔔 Notifications — optional desktop notifications on completion
🔐 Confirmations — ask before executing dangerous commands
💬 Self-documenting — built-in faq command answers questions about Vibe Action itself
🎯 CLI-first — no browser, no context switching. Everything in the terminal
🔌 IDE Integration — built-in api block for seamless VS Code and IntelliJ plugin support
⏱️ Process Guard — new runs automatically supersede previous ones, keeping state predictable
🔒 Open & Flexible — open source. Use local models via Ollama or cloud APIs (DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, Zhipu)
🦀 Fast — built in Rust

Key Concepts

YAML Pipelines

Describe your workflow in YAML, not code:

name: extract
about: Extract matching lines from text and logs
args:
  - name: file
    short: f
    input: string
    help: Path to the log or text file
  - name: query
    short: q
    input: string
    help: Extraction criteria (e.g., 'find all errors')
actions:
  - tag: tag_lines
    run: cmd
    expect: list
    action: cat {file}
  - tag: tag_content
    run: small
    expect: string
    action: |
      [Task]
      If the line matches the query — output the EXACT line unchanged.
      If it does not match — output only a single dash: "-"
      Do NOT skip lines. Process every line.

      [Query]
      {query}

      [Line]
      {tag_lines}
  - tag: tag_clean
    run: value
    expect: string
    action: '{tag_content|trim:-}'
  - tag: tag_extract
    run: value
    expect: string
    action: '{tag_clean|uniq|join}'

When/Then Conditions

Use when/then for conditional logic without shell scripts:

- tag: tag_result
  run: cmd
  expect: string
  action:
    - when: '{tag_check|contains:DIRTY}'
      then: echo "{tag_content}"
    - when: '{tag_check|contains:CLEAR}'
      then: echo "No errors found."

System Tags

Access environment context anywhere in your pipelines:

- tag: tag_info
  run: value
  expect: string
  action: |
    User: {system_user}
    OS: {system_os}
    PWD: {system_dir_pwd}
    Date: {system_date}

How It Works

You write a YAML file describing your workflow — steps, types, dependencies
The engine parses it and builds a dependency graph from {tag} references
Steps execute in order — shell commands run locally, LLM prompts go to your cluster
Results are validated against expected types and optional regex patterns
Final output is displayed on screen, copied to clipboard, or sent as notification

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