uncut

UNCUT is a tiny coding-agent harness for shell pipelines, CI jobs, containers, and agent experiments. It deliberately has no TUI, telemetry, plugin system, background agents, automatic retries, or context compaction.

The entire conversation is sent on every model call. File contents and combined command output are never truncated by UNCUT. If the provider cuts a response at its output limit, UNCUT exits with an error instead of presenting a partial answer as success. Run the proof yourself or inspect the recorded measurements.

Why UNCUT?

• Lossless by default. No summarization, pruning, sliding windows, or silent output caps.
• Headless only. Final text goes to stdout; structured NDJSON events are available with --json.
• Small and portable. One statically linked Go binary, no runtime or third-party Go dependencies.
• Provider neutral. Works with OpenAI-compatible Chat Completions endpoints, including local servers.
• Resumable. Optional append-only JSONL sessions preserve every message and tool result.
• Forkable. 837 lines of implementation Go, four tools, one provider protocol, one agent loop, MIT license.

Install

Linux

VERSION=0.1.1
ARCH=amd64  # Use arm64 on ARM64.
curl -fSLo uncut "https://github.com/Balanov/uncut/releases/download/v${VERSION}/uncut-linux-${ARCH}"
mkdir -p "$HOME/.local/bin"
install -m 0755 uncut "$HOME/.local/bin/uncut"
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
uncut --version

Make sure $HOME/.local/bin is on your PATH.

macOS

VERSION=0.1.1
ARCH=arm64  # Use amd64 on Intel.
curl -fSLo uncut "https://github.com/Balanov/uncut/releases/download/v${VERSION}/uncut-darwin-${ARCH}"
mkdir -p "$HOME/.local/bin"
install -m 0755 uncut "$HOME/.local/bin/uncut"
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
uncut --version

Windows PowerShell

$Version = "0.1.1"
$Arch = "amd64"  # Use arm64 on ARM64.
$Dest = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\UNCUT"
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force $Dest | Out-Null
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://github.com/Balanov/uncut/releases/download/v$Version/uncut-windows-$Arch.exe" -OutFile "$Dest\uncut.exe"
$env:Path = "$Dest;$env:Path"
uncut --version

Add $Dest to your user PATH to make UNCUT available in future terminals.

Checksums and OS warnings

Every release includes checksums.txt. For example, verify a Linux download with:

VERSION=0.1.1
ARCH=amd64
curl -fSLO "https://github.com/Balanov/uncut/releases/download/v${VERSION}/checksums.txt"
grep "uncut-linux-${ARCH}$" checksums.txt | sha256sum -c -

The binaries are not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen or Gatekeeper may warn. Verify the SHA-256 checksum before allowing a downloaded executable. On macOS, after verification, remove quarantine from this file only:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine "$HOME/.local/bin/uncut"

You can also build from source instead.

Go install and source builds

With Go 1.26+:

go install github.com/Balanov/uncut/cmd/uncut@latest

Or build a checkout:

git clone https://github.com/Balanov/uncut.git
cd uncut
go build -trimpath -ldflags="-s -w" -o bin/uncut ./cmd/uncut

On Windows, use bin/uncut.exe as the output path.

Quick start

Set a model and API key:

export UNCUT_API_KEY="your-api-key"
export UNCUT_MODEL="your-model-id"
uncut "Inspect this repository and fix the failing tests"

For an OpenAI-compatible provider, also set its base URL:

export UNCUT_BASE_URL="https://openrouter.ai/api/v1"

For a local Ollama server with an installed tool-capable model (this exact setup was smoke-tested with qwen3:8b):

ollama pull qwen3:8b
export UNCUT_BASE_URL="http://localhost:11434/v1"
export UNCUT_MODEL="qwen3:8b"
uncut "Explain this repository"

No API key is required by default for local endpoints. In PowerShell, set variables with $env:UNCUT_BASE_URL = "..." and $env:UNCUT_MODEL = "...". Replace the example model with one actually installed on your machine; tool-call behavior depends on the model.

Unix pipelines

git diff | uncut "Review this diff. Do not edit files."
cat failing-test.log | uncut "Find the likely cause"

Piped input is appended to the prompt verbatim. UNCUT accepts valid UTF-8 text and rejects invalid input rather than replacing bytes silently.

JSONL events

uncut --json "Run the tests and fix the failure"

The event stream contains user, assistant, assistant_meta, tool, and finally done or error records. Assistant messages include complete tool calls; tool messages include complete results. Usage and finish reasons are separate assistant_meta events.

Sessions

uncut --session .uncut/work.jsonl "Start the refactor"
uncut --session .uncut/work.jsonl "Continue with the tests"

If the file exists, UNCUT resumes its complete history. New messages are appended and synced after each step. A model step that UNCUT rejects — provider truncation, a tool call without an id or name, or an empty message — is not written to the session, so a failed run never leaves a session that the next run cannot resume. Invalid or partial records cause an explicit error; they are never discarded to make a session load.

Session files can contain source code, command output, and secrets. Store them accordingly and do not commit them accidentally.

Configuration

Useful flags:

AGENTS.md is read in full from the workspace root and added to the system prompt. On a resumed session, the original stored system message is reused.

Tools

File paths must stay inside the workspace. run_command uses /bin/sh -c on Unix and cmd.exe /D /S /C on Windows.

Some Windows utilities can emit UTF-16 or code-page output rather than UTF-8. UNCUT rejects that output instead of guessing a conversion; configure commands to emit UTF-8 when possible.

Exit codes

What “lossless” means

UNCUT does not truncate, summarize, or rewrite valid UTF-8 prompts, stored messages, file contents, or command output. It does not extend a model's context window, and it cannot control provider-side processing. When the context or output limit is exceeded, the provider may reject or cut the response; UNCUT surfaces that failure instead of hiding it.

Binary files and invalid UTF-8 are rejected explicitly. UNCUT uses no