Mentat — Personal AI Assistant

A personal AI assistant you run on your own devices. Written in Rust. Single binary, no runtime dependencies.

Mentat answers you on messaging channels (currently Telegram and Slack) and has a web dashboard for real-time control. The gateway is the control plane — the product is the assistant.

Install

Rust stable toolchain required. Single binary, no runtime dependencies.

git clone https://github.com/nshi/mentat.git
cd mentat
cargo build --release --locked
cargo install --path . --force --locked
mentat onboard

Quick start

# Install + onboard
./install.sh --api-key "sk-..." --provider openrouter

# Start the gateway (webhook server + web dashboard)
mentat gateway                # default: 127.0.0.1:42617

# Talk to the assistant
mentat agent -m "Hello, Mentat!"

# Interactive mode
mentat agent

# Start full autonomous runtime (gateway + channels + cron + hands)
mentat daemon

# Check status
mentat status

# Run diagnostics
mentat doctor

Configuration

Minimal ~/.mentat/config.toml:

default_provider = "anthropic"
api_key = "sk-ant-..."

Channels

[channels.telegram]
bot_token = "123456:ABC-DEF..."

[channels.slack]
bot_token = "xoxb-..."
app_token = "xapp-..."

Tunnels

[tunnel]
kind = "cloudflare"  # or "tailscale", "ngrok", "openvpn", "custom", "none"

Full config reference: docs/reference/api/config-reference.md

CLI commands

# Workspace management
mentat onboard              # Guided setup wizard
mentat status               # Show daemon/agent status
mentat doctor               # Run system diagnostics

# Gateway + daemon
mentat gateway              # Start gateway server (127.0.0.1:42617)
mentat daemon               # Start full autonomous runtime

# Agent
mentat agent                # Interactive chat mode
mentat agent -m "message"   # Single message mode

# Service management
mentat service install      # Install as OS service (launchd/systemd)
mentat service start|stop|restart|status

# Channels
mentat channel list         # List configured channels
mentat channel doctor       # Check channel health

# Cron + scheduling
mentat cron list            # List scheduled jobs
mentat cron add "*/5 * * * *" --prompt "Check system health"
mentat cron remove <id>

# Memory
mentat memory list          # List memory entries
mentat memory get <key>     # Retrieve a memory

# Auth profiles
mentat auth login --provider <name>
mentat auth status

# Shell completions
source <(mentat completions bash)

Full commands reference: docs/reference/cli/commands-reference.md

Security

Mentat connects to real messaging surfaces. Treat inbound DMs as untrusted input.

• DM pairing (default): unknown senders receive a pairing code; bot does not process their message until approved.
• Autonomy levels: ReadOnly (observe only), Supervised (default, approval for risky ops), Full (autonomous within policy).
• Sandboxing: workspace isolation, path traversal blocking, command allowlists, forbidden paths, rate limiting.

Details: SECURITY.md

Architecture

• Gateway: HTTP/WS/SSE control plane with sessions, config, cron, webhooks, web dashboard, and pairing.
• Agent loop: tool dispatch, prompt construction, message classification, memory loading.
• Providers: resilient wrapper with failover, retry, and model routing across 20+ LLM backends.
• Channels: Telegram and Slack (more planned).
• Tools: shell, file I/O, browser, git, web fetch/search, MCP, and 70+ more.
• Web dashboard: React 19 + Vite with real-time chat, memory browser, config editor, cron manager.

Architecture diagrams: docs/assets/architecture-diagrams.md

Workspace + skills

Workspace root: ~/.mentat/workspace/

Prompt files: IDENTITY.md, USER.md, MEMORY.md, AGENTS.md, SOUL.md

mentat skills list
mentat skills install https://github.com/user/my-skill.git
mentat skills audit https://github.com/user/my-skill.git
mentat skills remove my-skill

Prerequisites

• Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config
• Fedora/RHEL: sudo dnf group install development-tools && sudo dnf install pkg-config
• macOS: xcode-select --install
• Rust toolchain: curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Building from source needs ~2GB RAM (4GB+ recommended) and ~6GB disk (10GB+ recommended).

Docs

• Documentation hub
• Architecture diagrams
• Config reference
• Commands reference
• Providers reference
• Channels reference
• Operations runbook
• Troubleshooting
• Security
• Contributing

Attribution

Mentat is based on ZeroClaw, an open-source personal AI assistant. Credit to the original ZeroClaw authors and contributors.

License

Dual-licensed under MIT and Apache 2.0. You may choose either license.