Introduction

What is Parallax?

Parallax is a terminal-native AI coding assistant built for the command line. Instead of throwing you into a web browser or forcing you into a specific IDE, it runs locally in your terminal using React and Ink for a fast, stateful UI.

It relies exclusively on the Google Gemini family of models (Flash, Pro) and bypasses generic wrapper libraries to keep tight control over the reasoning loop and tool execution.

Core capabilities

• Precise File Patching — It reads your code and applies direct edits using high-capacity buffers, skipping the standard copy-paste dance.
• Local Execution — It has terminal command execution built in. It runs your tests, builds your project, and commits code if you tell it to.
• Native Ink TUI — It provides real-time streaming, interactive pickers, and color-coded status tracking, rendering flawlessly in any standard terminal.
• Persistent Memory — Conversations serialize automatically to ~/.parallax. You don't lose context because you accidentally hit Ctrl+C.

Quick Start

Install Parallax globally from npm:

npm install -g parallax-cli

Then run it in your project directory:

parallax

Note: Parallax hooks straight into @google/gemini-cli-core for authentication. Make sure you run gemini first to sign in.