GitHub Copilot CLI is GitHub's AI coding agent for the terminal. It can understand your codebase, make edits, run commands, and help you build software faster.

Open models can be used with Copilot CLI through Ollama, enabling you to use models such as qwen3.5, glm-5.1:cloud, kimi-k2.5:cloud.

Install

Install Copilot CLI:

```shell macOS / Linux (Homebrew) brew install copilot-cli ```

npm install -g @github/copilot

curl -fsSL https://gh.io/copilot-install | bash

winget install GitHub.Copilot

Usage with Ollama

Quick setup

ollama launch copilot

Run directly with a model

ollama launch copilot --model kimi-k2.5:cloud

Recommended Models

• kimi-k2.5:cloud
• glm-5:cloud
• minimax-m2.7:cloud
• qwen3.5:cloud
• glm-4.7-flash
• qwen3.5

Cloud models are also available at ollama.com/search?c=cloud.

Non-interactive (headless) mode

Run Copilot CLI without interaction for use in Docker, CI/CD, or scripts:

ollama launch copilot --model kimi-k2.5:cloud --yes -- -p "how does this repository work?"

The --yes flag auto-pulls the model, skips selectors, and requires --model to be specified. Arguments after -- are passed directly to Copilot CLI.

Manual setup

Copilot CLI connects to Ollama using the OpenAI-compatible API via environment variables.

1. Set the environment variables:

export COPILOT_PROVIDER_BASE_URL=http://localhost:11434/v1
export COPILOT_PROVIDER_API_KEY=
export COPILOT_PROVIDER_WIRE_API=responses
export COPILOT_MODEL=qwen3.5

1. Run Copilot CLI:

copilot

Or run with environment variables inline:

COPILOT_PROVIDER_BASE_URL=http://localhost:11434/v1 COPILOT_PROVIDER_API_KEY= COPILOT_PROVIDER_WIRE_API=responses COPILOT_MODEL=glm-5:cloud copilot

Note: Copilot requires a large context window. We recommend at least 64k tokens. See the context length documentation for how to adjust context length in Ollama.