Just the DAEMON.
CrabTalk is an open-source agent daemon written in Rust. Five megabytes, zero children, nothing hidden — just the plumbing every agent app rebuilds, written once and shared.
Install · one line
curl -sSL https://crabtalk.ai/install | sh
00 · Install
Fig. 00
Fig. 00 · Architecture. A cross-section of the daemon. One long-lived process in the centre; clients (CLI, bots, scheduled jobs) attach from outside; the model lives across a clean boundary in a separate project called crabllm.
“Attach your apps, bring whatever tools you like.”
Attach, and speak.
One command launches the daemon and drops you into a session. No server to provision, no config to author, no dashboard to sign into. The binary is five megabytes; it holds nothing back.
Every message you send is visible in the stream. Every tool call, every event, every byte. If you want to build your own client — a Telegram bot, a scheduled cron, a dashboard — attach the same way this terminal does.
CONNECTION · oneattached
$ crabtalk
...daemon started
> what can you help me with?
I can help you write code, search the web,
manage files, and remember context
across topics.
01 · Live
Fig. 01 · An connection. The terminal client attaches to the daemon on startup. Type a message; the reply streams back over the same connection. Every other client — bot, cron, dashboard — does exactly this.
Five pillars
Four guarantees the daemon makes, drawn out on this sheet. Crashes don’t propagate. Topics route themselves. Memory stays precise. Coordination scales. Each one a plate; each plate a sentence; the sheet reads in any order you like.
01 / 05
In most AI systems, one tool crashes and the whole chat crashes with it.
CrabTalk runs every tool, every command, every extension in its own space. One breaks; the rest keep going.
Fig. 01. Broken parts, stable core. A central body holds; satellites move on their own orbits, breaking apart and re-forming without disturbing the centre.
02 / 05
Fig. 02. Topic lanes. Messages travel along their own subject channels — work in the work lane, home in the home lane — without per-window juggling.
Other AI makes you open a new chat per subject.
CrabTalk sorts by topic itself — work stays in the work channel, home switches itself, no window-juggling.
03 / 05
67DD5C66F3A8861EA635D2CF0E49E0ED488AA790A54CF3C9CA01D068B718B752FD246F987B04B9EE329E5DCCF8219F9F586EC057D94052D7ECFDDB3229CE2175E0FD5F28BFDE756148DEFF6CA944B2679F31D43AB9A0DF59099E0DB751EDC88228460EE1B73D6C1204BB7BA3C0D11AC8FE805EBA097B679C12B1B5C72F080EB9E57C0891F3F512D7C4F9C8239408B331B321086F81A0FCD64C4178D6E2302F8FB6A773B10D4542D396D5F9D253FB710E7389F568
Fig. 03. Indexed retrieval. A bound archive built on the same internals engineers trust for their databases — fast lookup that doesn’t slow as it grows.
AI memory usually forgets fast, or slows to a crawl as it grows.
We ported the internals of SQLite to the recall layer — accurate, fast to query, compact on disk.
04 / 05
Fig. 04. At scale. Hundreds of agents in coordinated motion — a conductor facing a full orchestra, each section playing its own line on cue.
Other systems may cap around 10 concurrent agents.
CrabTalk is designed for coordinateing 10,000. A conductor facing a full orchestra, not a small ensemble.
05 / 05
Fig. 05. One conversation, two voices. A guest agent speaks directly into the shared history — tagged, not delegated — then the primary resumes on the next turn.
Sometimes a second agent should speak into an ongoing conversation — a reviewer, a translator, an expert.
CrabTalk lets a guest read the shared history, add a tagged message, and step back. The primary picks up where it left off.
06 · End
Just the daemon.
5 MB · zero children