What is Nerve?

Nerve is a simple yet powerful Agent Development Kit (ADK) for building, running, evaluating, and orchestrating LLM-based agents using only YAML and a CLI. It is designed for technical users who want programmable, auditable, and reproducible automation with large language models.

How to use Nerve?

Install Nerve with pip install nerve-adk. Download an existing agent from a GitHub repository using nerve install (e.g., nerve install evilsocket/changelog), create a new agent with the guided nerve create new-agent command, and run it with nerve run new-agent.

Key features of Nerve

- Declarative agents defined entirely in YAML (system prompt, task, tools, variables)
- Built-in tools and extensibility via shell commands, Python functions, or remote tools
- Native MCP support – acts as both client and server, can define MCP servers in YAML
- Evaluation mode with YAML, Parquet, or folder-based test cases and structured outputs
- Workflows – compose agents into simple, linear pipelines with shared context
- LLM-agnostic – built on LiteLLM, supports dozens of providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, etc.)

Use cases of Nerve

- Building and running custom LLM agents using declarative YAML definitions
- Evaluating agent performance with reproducible, automated test cases
- Orchestrating multi-step automations by composing agents into linear workflows
- Integrating MCP servers as tools within agents and enabling agent‑to‑agent communication

FAQ from Nerve

What is Nerve exactly?

Nerve is an Agent Development Kit that lets you define, run, evaluate, and orchestrate LLM-based agents using simple YAML files and a command-line interface.

Which LLM providers does Nerve support?

Nerve is LLM-agnostic, built on LiteLLM, and supports dozens of providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Ollama (local models). You can switch models by changing a single line in your YAML config.

Does Nerve support MCP?

Yes, Nerve has native MCP support as both a client and a server. It is the first framework that allows you to define MCP servers in YAML, enabling deep orchestration and agent teams.

How do I install Nerve?

Installation is straightforward: run pip install nerve-adk. Then use the nerve CLI to install, create, and run agents.

What is the license for Nerve?

Nerve is released under the GPL 3 license, making it free and open source for use, modification, and distribution under the same terms.