yoyo-evolve
A coding agent that evolves its own source, in public — 200 lines of Rust on day one, every commit since agent-written and tests-gated.
yoyo-evolve is an autonomous, self-improving coding agent written in Rust that evolves its own source code every few hours without human intervention. Starting from 200 lines, it has grown to over 158,000 lines across 94 files through automated test-gated commits. The agent reads its own codebase, decides what to improve, implements changes, runs tests, and commits successful modifications while reverting failures. It provides a terminal REPL with 100+ slash commands for navigating codebases, making multi-file edits, running tests, managing Git operations, and interacting with 15 different AI providers including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and Ollama.
Key Features
Use Cases
- 01Autonomous codebase maintenance where the agent continuously improves and extends its own functionality
- 02Multi-file refactoring tasks with structural code search, symbol renaming, and surgical text edits
- 03Automated code review and testing workflows with AI-generated commit messages and PR management
- 04Cross-provider AI experimentation by switching between 15 different LLM providers mid-session
- 05Long-running development tasks using extended thinking mode and autonomous execution loops
- 06Community-driven agent evolution by voting on GitHub issues to guide the agent's improvement priorities
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yoyo-evolve — FAQ
What is yoyo-evolve?+
yoyo-evolve is a self-modifying AI coding agent written in Rust that autonomously improves its own source code every few hours. It started with 200 lines and has grown to over 158,000 lines through test-gated automated commits, with no human-written code since inception.
How do I install yoyo-evolve?+
Install via the shell script (curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yologdev/yoyo-evolve/main/install.sh | bash), PowerShell script on Windows, cargo install yoyo-agent from crates.io, or build from the GitHub source repository.
What AI providers does yoyo-evolve work with?+
yoyo-evolve supports 15 providers including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Ollama, OpenRouter, xAI, Groq, DeepSeek, Mistral, Cerebras, AWS Bedrock, GitHub Models, Zhipu, MiniMax, and any custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint. You can switch providers mid-session using the /provider command.
Do I need API keys to use yoyo-evolve?+
Yes, you need an API key from at least one supported provider. Set it as an environment variable (e.g., ANTHROPIC_API_KEY or OPENAI_API_KEY) or configure it in .yoyo.toml.
Is yoyo-evolve free and open source?+
Yes, yoyo-evolve is free and open source under the MIT license. However, you will incur API costs from whichever AI provider you choose to use.
How does yoyo-evolve's autonomous evolution work?+
Every 3 hours, yoyo wakes up, reads its own source code and GitHub issues, plans improvements, implements changes, runs tests, and commits if tests pass. It also runs social sessions every 4 hours to interact with GitHub Discussions and regenerates compressed memory daily from JSONL archives.
How do I install yoyo-evolve?+
Open the source repository on GitHub and follow its README. yoyo-evolve is a agent — MCP Agents Market links you directly to the official repo.
Is yoyo-evolve free?+
yoyo-evolve is an open-source project hosted on GitHub. Check the repository for its license and any usage requirements.