Is Smoke Monkey an AI model?

No. Smoke Monkey is not an LLM. It is an embeddable, framework-agnostic runtime that turns LLMs (NVIDIA, Gemini, OpenAI, Claude, Ollama) into autonomous engineering agents capable of multi-step planning, calling tools, editing files, and running test loops with zero runtime dependencies.

Do I need a database (Postgres, SQLite, or Redis)?

No database is required. State is persisted through lean session files on disk, or you can plug in your own custom storage adapter. You can deploy it as a CLI, a desktop app, or inside a serverless function without provisioning a database.

How does human-in-the-loop permission gating work?

Smoke Monkey comes with three permission policies: allow-all, deny-all, and ask-default (or a custom function resolver). When a sensitive tool like edit_file or run_command is called under "ask", the runtime emits a permission.required event, pausing execution until your code or UI calls agent.resolvePermission(id, "allow" | "deny").

How does the Model Context Protocol (MCP) server work?

Smoke Monkey ships an official stdio MCP server in smoke-monkey-harness-mcp. Point Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or opencode at it using npx -y smoke-monkey-harness-mcp to let other AI tools plan, scaffold, verify, and run agents using Smoke Monkey automatically.

What are SKILL.md skills and how do they prevent context bloat?

Skills are directories containing a SKILL.md workflow file. The system prompt only includes a one-line catalog of available skills. When a task requires specialized expertise (e.g. frontend-ui-engineering, test-driven-development, or security-hardening), the agent calls use_skill to load instructions just-in-time, saving thousands of tokens.

What is an AI Agent Harness?

An AI agent harness is the execution environment that bridges raw Large Language Models (LLMs) to real-world software engineering capabilities. While an LLM generates tokens, an AI harness manages deterministic phase loops (explore, plan, edit, verify, recover), tool execution sandboxing, token budget compaction, and safety gates needed for autonomous problem-solving.

What makes Smoke Monkey an Agentic AI runtime rather than a simple wrapper?

Unlike basic prompt-response chains, Smoke Monkey implements true agentic AI architecture: a deterministic 6-phase state machine with automatic failure recovery, runaway loop guards, 24 built-in developer tools, dynamic subcontext isolation, and interactive human-in-the-loop permission pauses.

Is Smoke Monkey Harness 100% Open Source AI?

Yes. Smoke Monkey Harness is 100% open source under the permissive MIT license with zero runtime dependencies. There is no telemetry lock-in, no mandatory cloud backend, and no database requirement—giving engineering teams complete sovereignty over their agent code.

What Agent APIs does Smoke Monkey Harness provide?

Smoke Monkey provides composable TypeScript Agent APIs: createAgent() for initialization, agent.run() for multi-turn execution, agent.on() for fine-grained lifecycle and streaming events, agent.resolvePermission() for interactive human authorization, subcontext switching APIs, and stdio Model Context Protocol (MCP) server endpoints.

Can I run completely offline without API keys?

Yes! Smoke Monkey natively supports Ollama out of the box. Set provider: "ollama" and model: "qwen3:8b" with workspacePath, and the agent will run locally on your machine with zero external network requests.

Open Source

6 min readUpdated: October 2026

Free & Open Source AI Agent Framework: 100% MIT Licensed TypeScript Harness

Most enterprise AI agent frameworks trap you in high subscription fees, cloud telemetry lock-in, or proprietary backends. Smoke Monkey Harness is 100% open source under the permissive MIT license, designed to run completely free on your infrastructure with zero runtime dependencies.

Technical Review: Smoke Monkey Core Architecture Team

|Tested on Node.js 18+ & Bun|TypeScript 5.x

Quick Answer & Executive Definition

Free & Open Source AI Agent Framework: 100% MIT Licensed TypeScript Harness: Most enterprise AI agent frameworks trap you in high subscription fees, cloud telemetry lock-in, or proprietary backends. Smoke Monkey Harness is 100% open source under the permissive MIT license, designed to run completely free on your infrastructure with zero runtime dependencies. Designed as a zero-dependency, open-source TypeScript architecture under the MIT License with native Model Context Protocol (MCP) support and deterministic phase state machines.

Key Architectural Takeaways

100% MIT Permissive License: Deploy in commercial, enterprise, or personal projects with zero license fees.
Zero Runtime Dependencies: Runs purely on Node.js standard libraries (`node:fs`, `node:child_process`, `node:crypto`).
Run Free with Local Models: Connect to Ollama (qwen3, llama3) for 100% offline, zero-token-cost execution.
No Hidden Telemetry: Your code, prompts, and tool outputs stay entirely within your private environment.

Quick Implementation Examplefree-agent.ts

free-agent.tstypescript

1import { createAgent } from 'smoke-monkey-harness';
2
3// 100% free and open source: run with local Ollama or free-tier APIs
4const agent = createAgent({
5  provider: 'ollama',
6  model: 'qwen3:8b', // Free local open weights
7  workspacePath: process.cwd(),
8  autoApprove: true,
9});
10
11const result = await agent.run('Analyze repository structure and document dependencies');
12console.log('Finished with status:', result.status);

Why Open Source Sovereignty Matters for AI Agents

When building software development tools or internal company automations, granting third-party closed-source agents access to your code repositories creates severe compliance, security, and IP risks. With Smoke Monkey Harness, every line of the agent runtime is open source, transparent, and auditable. You have absolute sovereignty over what commands run, how data is parsed, and where sessions are stored.

Zero Dependencies: True Freedom from Supply Chain Vulnerabilities

Typical JavaScript packages carry dozens of transitive dependencies that regularly suffer from security advisories, deprecation cycles, and breaking upgrades. Smoke Monkey Harness relies solely on Node.js built-ins. You can vendor the library directly into your codebase or install via npm with complete peace of mind.

Zero Vulnerability Surface

Running `npm audit` on a project with Smoke Monkey Harness reports 0 vulnerabilities because there are zero external runtime dependencies.

Running 100% Offline Without API Keys

Combine Smoke Monkey with Ollama to run high-speed agentic loops on your laptop or private air-gapped GPU servers. The agent invokes local bash commands, performs AST file diffs, and inspects git history with zero network roundtrips.

ollama-config.tstypescript

1const localAgent = createAgent({
2  provider: 'ollama',
3  model: 'qwen3:8b', // or 'llama3.3:70b' on GPU servers
4  workspacePath: '/path/to/private/repo',
5});

Google Search Questions & Answers

Frequently Asked Questions

Q:Is Smoke Monkey Harness really 100% free to use in commercial products?

Yes. Smoke Monkey Harness is released under the MIT License. You can embed it in commercial SaaS applications, internal enterprise tooling, or proprietary software with no licensing royalties.

Q:Are there any usage limits or rate caps built into the open source package?

None whatsoever. The runtime has no call home telemetry, no token counters, and no artificial throttles. Any limits are determined solely by your own hardware or the LLM provider API you configure.

Q:How do I contribute to the open source project?

Contributions are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/RajdeepDevelopment/smoke-monkey-harness. You can submit issues, feature requests, custom tools, or PRs.

Open Source Devin Alternative: Build Autonomous Software Engineers in TypeScript

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Build with Smoke Monkey Harness

Zero dependencies. 24 built-in tools. Human-in-the-loop safety. 100% open source under the MIT License.

npm install smoke-monkey-harness