Small language models. Runs offline. Runs on CPU. No cloud. No API keys. Privacy first. No tracking.
Zest CLI translates natural language into shell commands using a local small language model. MacOS only. Learn more at zestcli.com.
While the GIF shows simple file management, Zest is designed for a variety of domains:
- Networking: "Show all active listening TCP ports"
- Docker: "Show the logs for the Docker container
my-app" - Git: "Show the most recent commit that modified the file
components/pages/AboutPage.tsx" - System: "Check my disk usage sorted by the top 5 largest directories in my home folder"
Note: Zest works best with single requests. i.e. show the top 5 XXX is better than show the top 5 XXX or YYY
- Small language models — purpose-trained SLMs optimised for CLI command translation
- Runs offline — runs entirely on your machine with no network calls at inference time
- Runs on CPU — no GPU needed, works on any modern Mac
- No cloud — no cloud dependencies at inference time
- No API keys — no accounts, tokens, or subscriptions required
- Privacy first — your commands and queries never leave your device
- No tracking — zero telemetry, user data, or usage data collection
While the core agent runs offline on CPU (privacy-first, no tracking), the training pipeline utilizes Google Cloud Storage (GCS) to manage datasets before they are loaded into Google Colab for fine-tuning.
- Terraform: State management and infrastructure provisioning across environments.
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP):
- Cloud Storage (GCS): Persistent storage for training datasets and artifacts.
- IAM: Role-based access control for engineering and operations teams.
- Cloud Billing: Cost tracking and budget alerts via email.
- Cloudflare:
- DNS & Domain Management: Domain
zestcli.com, and DNS. - Security & Performance: Website passed through cloudflare proxy
- DNS & Domain Management: Domain
- GitHub Pages:
- Free tier hosting on GitHub Pages.
- Zoho Mail:
- Email Hosting: Custom-domain email for internal and operational communication.
- Resend:
- Transactional Email: Reliable delivery for product emails (auth, notifications, receipts).
- Polar.sh:
- Payments & Checkout: Subscription management and checkout flow for monetization.
New developers must be onboarded with IAM permissions and API keys before working with this infrastructure. See docs/setup.md for setup, deployment, IAM, and secrets configuration.

