An autonomous agent for scientific data management — HDF5, Parquet, and CSV inspection through a FastMCP tool gateway, with a Bubbletea terminal UI (gact) for interactive work. CLIO is the Intelligence Layer (CEI) of the IOWarp platform.
The agent runs in three tiers: a main orchestrator (planner loop over registered tools and experts), domain experts (data / analysis / visualization), and ephemeral nanoagents for parallel sub-tasks. State lives in a local-first memory layer (ARC) that all tiers read and write.
- Multi-expert orchestration with capability-based routing
- FastMCP tool gateway, HDF5 + Parquet servers out of the box
- ARC memory with O(log N) context retrieval
- Optimizer layer for offline tuning + online learning
- Runtime doctor for LM / gateway / file-policy health
- Works with LM Studio, Ollama, OpenAI, Anthropic, and the Argonne ALCF inference gateway
One line installs clio-agent + the gact TUI, builds them, and drops a clio command on your PATH.
Linux / macOS
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iowarp/clio-agent/main/install/install.sh | bash
clioWindows (PowerShell)
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iowarp/clio-agent/main/install/install.ps1 | iex
clioclio boots the server (if it isn't already up) and attaches the TUI. On first connect, pick an LM provider in the modal and you're chatting.
Prerequisites: git, uv, and go 1.26+ — the installer tells you if any are missing.
clio with no arguments is the one-command UX. The subcommands manage the backing server without hunting PIDs:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
clio |
ensure the server is up, then attach the TUI |
clio start / stop / restart |
server lifecycle (process-tree kill on stop) |
clio status / ps |
PID, port, health |
clio logs [N] |
tail server + TUI stderr logs |
clio doctor |
check prerequisites and install layout |
clio report |
diagnostics bundle for filing GitHub issues |
clio completion <shell> |
tab-completion (bash / zsh / powershell) |
clio uninstall |
remove CLIO (--purge / -Purge to drop config too) |
Override paths with CLIO_PREFIX / CLIO_BIN_DIR and the server port with CLIO_PORT. Full install + uninstall reference: install/README.md.
For the design rationale (three-tier hierarchy, ARC memory, optimizer layer, IOWarp integration), see docs/CLIO_AGENT_ARCHITECTURE.md.
| Doc | What's in it |
|---|---|
| docs/CLIO_AGENT_ARCHITECTURE.md | Three-tier design, ARC memory, optimizer layer |
| docs/SYSTEM_IDENTITY.md | What the agent is, design principles |
| docs/SETUP.md | From-scratch install + smoke test (manual path) |
| docs/CONTRIBUTOR_QUICKSTART.md | Dev environment, quality checks, where to put code |
| docs/MCP_TOOL_INTEGRATION.md | Adding tools via FastMCP |
| docs/EXPERT_SYSTEM_DESIGN.md | Adding new experts |
| docs/ARC_MEMORY_LAYER.md | Memory model and storage |
| docs/SELF_IMPROVEMENT.md | Optimizer layer |
| docs/PERMISSIONS.md | Tool permission system |
| docs/providers/ | LM provider configuration |
| docs/CAPABILITIES_MATRIX.md | Feature matrix |
| PLAN.md | Roadmap |
Start with docs/CONTRIBUTOR_QUICKSTART.md. For guidance specific to AI agents working on the codebase, see AGENTS.md.
BSD-3-Clause.
@software{clioagent2026,
title = {CLIO Agent: Autonomous Agent for Scientific Data Management},
author = {IOWarp Team},
year = {2026},
url = {https://github.com/iowarp/clio-agent},
}