Overview

Kilo Code (slug kilo) is a command line coding agent run non-interactively against the test case prompt. It reaches its model through OpenRouter with a user-supplied key, so its runs are routed and priced by an aggregator rather than billed by a single provider. See kilo.ai.

Model IDs

Kilo Code uses OpenRouter model identifiers, which carry an openrouter/ prefix in front of the provider-qualified slug. The following are illustrative, not an exhaustive list:

• openrouter/anthropic/claude-opus-4.8
• openrouter/minimax/minimax-m3
• openrouter/google/gemini-3.5-flash

Invocation

The harness probes and invokes the kilo binary. It is installed into the run container at run time with:

npm install -g @kilocode/cli && npm cache clean --force

Each non-interactive session runs the binary with these flags:

Flag	Purpose
run	The non-interactive subcommand.
--format json	Emit the line-delimited JSON event stream consumed for events and usage.
--auto	Run unattended, without per-action approval prompts.
--model <id>	The model to run.

The prompt is passed as the final positional argument.

Authentication. Kilo Code’s API key is sourced from OPENROUTER_API_KEY on the host, which is forwarded into the run container under the same name.

Pricing. Kilo Code already reports OpenRouter-prefixed model IDs, so the comparable-cost lookup strips the leading openrouter/ before consulting OpenRouter — openrouter/anthropic/claude-opus-4.8 becomes anthropic/claude-opus-4.8. Kilo Code does not self-report a run cost, so the comparable cost is always OpenRouter-derived; see Metrics.

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See Events for how Kilo Code’s output is normalized and Metrics for how its usage is counted. For the harness layer these pages fit into, see Harnesses.