---
title: Overview
path: overview
status: published
---

# Overview

**ScaiFlux is an agentic coding tool, first and foremost.** Not a chat
client that happens to have tools — a tool-using coding agent that
talks via chat. You point it at a project on your machine, and it
*acts*: reads files, runs commands, edits code, searches the web,
runs your tests. The model isn't just describing what you should do
in prose — it's invoking the actual operations and showing you the
results. The whole interaction happens in your shell; there's no IDE
plug-in, no browser tab.

The chat surface is the steering wheel. The agent is the engine.

## What it's for

- **Coding alongside a model**, with the model able to *act* (read,
  run, edit) instead of just describing what you should do.
- **One-shot automation** — `scaiflux prompt "summarize what changed
  in src/auth since main"` works without dropping into an interactive
  session.
- **Programmatic orchestration** via `scaiflux serve` — an external
  controller (ScaiForge, a custom harness, anything that speaks
  NDJSON over stdio) drives a sandboxed ScaiFlux process with full
  permission proxying.

## What it isn't

- It isn't an IDE. There's no syntax-highlighted editor pane, no
  file tree, no debugger.
- It isn't a hosted product. ScaiFlux runs on your machine and talks
  to ScaiGrid for inference — model weights live there, your code
  lives here.
- It isn't tied to one model. The catalog comes from your ScaiGrid
  tenant; pick whatever fits the task.

## How it fits together

```mermaid
sequenceDiagram
    autonumber
    participant Shell as your shell
    participant SF as ScaiFlux
    participant SG as ScaiGrid
    participant M as upstream model
    Shell->>SF: type a prompt
    SF->>SG: POST /chat/...
    SG->>M: route to model
    M-->>SG: stream deltas
    SG-->>SF: stream deltas
    SF-->>Shell: render deltas
    Note over SF: run tool locally<br/>(read / write / bash)
    SF-->>Shell: files edited
```

ScaiFlux is the local agent (this is what you install). ScaiGrid is
the inference gateway (ScaiLabs hosts the default deployment at
`scaigrid.scailabs.ai`; you can point at any OpenAI-compatible
backend). ScaiKey is the identity layer for OAuth-style login —
optional; API keys work too.

## Get started

- New here? → [Quickstart](./quickstart)
- Ready to install? → [Install](./install)
- Want the full CLI surface? → [CLI reference](./reference/cli)
- Driving ScaiFlux from another program? → [Serve mode protocol](./reference/serve-protocol)