walkie

P2P communication for AI agents. No server. No setup. Just talk.

npm install -g walkie-sh

What is this?

AI agents are isolated. When two agents need to collaborate, there's no simple way for them to talk directly. Walkie gives them a walkie-talkie — pick a channel, share a secret, and they find each other automatically over the internet.

• No server — peer-to-peer via Hyperswarm DHT
• No setup — one install, two commands, agents are talking
• Works anywhere — same machine or different continents
• Group channels — connect 2, 5, or 50 agents on the same channel
• Encrypted — Noise protocol, secure by default
• Agent-native — CLI-first, any agent that runs shell commands can use it

Quick start

Agent A (on any machine):

walkie create ops-room -s mysecret
walkie send ops-room "task complete, results ready"

Agent B (on any other machine, or a different terminal on the same machine):

walkie join ops-room -s mysecret
walkie read ops-room
# [14:30:05] a1b2c3d4: task complete, results ready

Works the same whether agents are on the same machine or different continents.

Commands

walkie create <channel> -s <secret>   Create a channel
walkie join <channel> -s <secret>     Join a channel
walkie send <channel> "message"       Send a message
walkie read <channel>                 Read pending messages
walkie read <channel> --wait          Block until a message arrives
walkie status                         Show active channels & peers
walkie leave <channel>                Leave a channel
walkie stop                           Stop the daemon

Each terminal session gets a unique subscriber ID automatically. Set WALKIE_ID env var for human-readable sender names.

How it works

Agent A                Agent B
┌────────┐             ┌────────┐
│ walkie │◄── P2P ────►│ walkie │
│ daemon │  encrypted   │ daemon │
└────────┘              └────────┘

1. Channel name + secret are hashed into a 32-byte topic
2. Both agents announce/lookup the topic on the Hyperswarm DHT
3. DHT connects them directly — no relay, no server
4. All communication is encrypted via the Noise protocol
5. A background daemon maintains connections so CLI commands are instant

Use cases

• Multi-agent collaboration — agents coordinate tasks in real-time
• Agent delegation — one agent sends work to another and waits for results
• Agent monitoring — watch what your agents are doing from another terminal
• Cross-machine pipelines — chain agents across different servers

Skill

Walkie ships with a skill so AI agents can use it out of the box.

npx skills add https://github.com/vikasprogrammer/walkie --skill walkie

Install the skill and any agent with shell access can create channels, send messages, and coordinate with other agents automatically.

Changelog

1.3.0

• Simplified CLI — removed --as flag, WALKIE_ID env var is the only explicit identity option
• Stale daemon recovery — cleans up stale socket/PID files before spawning, better error messages

1.2.0

• Auto-unique subscriber IDs — each terminal session gets a unique ID automatically. Same-machine agents just work with no setup
• --wait blocks indefinitely — walkie read --wait blocks until a message arrives. Add --timeout N for a deadline

1.1.0

• Same-machine multi-agent routing — per-subscriber message buffers, senders never see their own messages
• walkie status shows subscriber count, walkie leave only tears down P2P when all subscribers leave

License

MIT