Mini Me and the ACP protocol (Agent Client Protocol)

The Agent Client Protocol (ACP) is an open protocol that standardizes communication between code editors or IDEs and AI coding agents. Just like LSP for language servers, it lets you connect an agent to any compatible editor without having to build a specific integration for every combination. agent client protocol

And of course, Mini Me supports ACP 🙂. Today, let's see how to use it with Zed Editor and VSCode.

I've prepared a "translator" agent for you that translates English to French (and vice versa) using the unsloth/gemma-4-E4B-it-GGUF:Q4_K_M model. You can grab it like this:

git clone --depth 1 --filter=blob:none --sparse https://git.rickub.com/bots-garden/squadron.git /tmp/squadron
git -C /tmp/squadron sparse-checkout set translator
mv /tmp/squadron/translator ./translator
rm -rf /tmp/squadron

You should end up with a tree like this one:

.
└── translator
    ├── agent.yaml
    ├── AGENTS.md
    ├── README.md
    └── skills
        ├── email-letter
        │   └── SKILL.md
        ├── idioms
        │   └── SKILL.md
        ├── styles
        │   └── SKILL.md
        └── technical-text
            └── SKILL.md

This agent uses llmman to serve the model:

llmman pull hf.co/unsloth/gemma-4-E4B-it-GGUF:Q4_K_M

Let's start with Zed Editor.

Mini Me and Zed Editor

For Zed Editor, you'll need to provide the full path to your agent.yaml file (in my case it will be: /Users/k33g/kDrive/Rickub/bots-garden/squadron/translator/agent.yaml). Open the Zed Editor configuration file (~/.config/zed/settings.json) and add your agent's configuration to the "agent_servers" section like this:

"agent_servers": {
    "🐮 Garfield (translator)": {
        "type": "custom",
        "command": "mm",
        "args": ["-acp"],
        "env": { "AGENT_CONFIG": "/Users/k33g/kDrive/Rickub/bots-garden/squadron/translator/agent.yaml" }
    },

And now you can comfortably use Mini Me from Zed Editor:

You can also access the commands and skills exposed by Mini Me:

But, as I was saying yesterday, for better security, it's essential to run your agents in secure environments (sandboxes). See the previous blog post: Don't let your agents roam free in the wild: Mini Me gets its sbx kit. So let's see how to use the ACP protocol with our agent running inside an sbx sandbox.

Configuration with sbx and the "Mini Me" kit

You'll probably need to tell sbx that it's allowed to fetch the "Mini Me" kit from git.rickub.com/bots-garden/:

sbx settings set kit.allowedSources '["docker.io/","git.rickub.com/bots-garden/"]'

Then, in your project folder, you need to create an sbx sandbox using the kit (I named the sandbox mm-translator), specifying the current directory with .:

cd translator
RELEASE=v0.0.1
REPOSITORY=git+https://git.rickub.com/bots-garden/mini-me-kit.git
sbx create --name mm-translator "${REPOSITORY}#ref=${RELEASE}&dir=mini-me" .

Important

• In TUI mode, mm works in the directory where it is launched. With sbx run, that's the mounted workspace, translator.
• In ACP mode, mm works in the directory the editor sends it when the session opens: the folder opened in the IDE.

So open the editor from the translator folder:

zed .

And now add the configuration of this new agent to the "agent_servers" section like this:

"🐮 [sbx] Garfield (translator)": {
    "type": "custom",
    "command": "sbx",
    "args": ["exec", "-i", "mm-translator", "mm", "-acp"]
},

And now you get all the comfort of using the agent, but in a fully secure mode:

I've become a big fan of the ACP protocol, but my IDE of choice is VSCode (and also VSCodium), and VSCode doesn't support ACP out of the box. There are, however, a few extensions for that, and after testing them, my pick is ACP Patchbay. Let's see how to set it up.

You can find the ACP Patchbay extension on:

• The VSCode marketplace
• The Open VSX marketplace

Mini Me, ACP and VSCode (or VSCodium) with ACP Patchbay

Once the extension is installed, go to the ACP Patchbay settings and click on "add agent"

Choose "add custom..."

Enter the following command: mm -acp -config /Users/k33g/kDrive/Rickub/bots-garden/squadron/translator/agent.yaml and click on "add":

You now have a new mm agent:

Go back to the settings to give it a "more meaningful" name:

You can now select the agent you want to interact with:

And now, you can use it with a level of comfort similar to Zed Editor:

And what about using it with sbx?

Configuration with sbx and the "Mini Me" kit

It's very simple: you follow the same steps, but this time, you use the following command:

sbx exec -i mm-translator mm -acp

And, then open the editor from the translator folder:

code . # or codium .

And there you go, you have everything you need to use Mini Me comfortably and securely in your favorite code editor. And keep in mind that all of this is very easy to adapt to any agent that supports the ACP protocol.