What is swarm?

Swarm is an AI-powered coding assistant that runs in your terminal. You type requests in plain English, like "create a UserController.php file" or "explain dependency injection", and it figures out what you need, whether that's generating actual code files, showing a code snippet, or just explaining a concept. It's essentially a chatbot that can read, write, and search through your project files. When you type a request, the agent first classifies what kind of help you're asking for. If you want a quick example or explanation, it just responds with text. If you need it to actually do something in your project, create a file, search your codebase, fetch a web page, it uses built-in tools to carry out the task. It remembers your last 20 messages of conversation, so you can ask follow-up questions without restating context. The whole thing runs through OpenAI's API, so you need an API key to use it. This would appeal to developers who spend a lot of time in the terminal and want quick help without switching to a browser or a full IDE. For example, you could ask it to scaffold a new controller, search your codebase for a specific pattern, or pull documentation from a web page, all from one command-line interface. It's worth noting that the project is written in PHP rather than the Python or TypeScript that most AI tools use, which makes it a relatively uncommon choice in this space. Security is built in thoughtfully. File access is restricted to your project directory by default, with protections against path traversal attacks. Shell command execution is disabled out of the box and must be explicitly turned on. The web-fetching tool blocks access to private and local network addresses. These guardrails matter because the agent can read and write files on your machine, so the constraints help prevent accidental damage. The project is labeled work-in-progress, requires PHP 8.3 or higher, and is open source under the MIT license.