Mentat

Mentat brings AI pair programming to the terminal with a focus on coordinated, multi-file changes. Pointed at an existing repository, the assistant reads project context, then edits several files in one operation, creates new files where needed, and can run commands as part of a change, rather than returning snippets to paste by hand. It connects to hosted models such as GPT-4 and Claude and can also target local models, so teams choose their own provider. The project by AbanteAI is open source under the Apache 2.0 license and installs as a Python command line tool. It appeals to developers who want a scriptable, self-hostable coding agent that works inside their own environment rather than an IDE plugin tied to a single vendor, and it stands as one of the earlier open examples of a codebase-aware coding assistant.