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Interfaces

The same agent, the same tools and the same session store are exposed through four surfaces. Pick whichever fits how you work; sessions are shared across them.

Interactive CLI

helioai

A readline prompt with history (persisted to ~/.helioai_history), editing and tab-friendly recall. Each event is rendered as it happens, so you watch the agent resolve parameters, call tools and produce figures rather than waiting on a spinner.

helioai> solar wind density from ACE in January 2005
helioai> compare MMS and Cluster magnetic field during the 2017-07-11 reconnection event
helioai> superposed epoch analysis of MMS bow-shock crossings — proton density, 2017

Figures open in your OS viewer automatically. Ctrl+D or exit to leave.

One-shot

helioai "IP shock detection in WIND/MFI data, 2005-01-16 to 2005-01-17"

Session management

helioai history              # list past sessions
helioai --resume             # pick one to continue
helioai --session <id>       # continue a specific one
helioai delete <prefix>      # drop a session and its workspace
helioai export [prefix]      # export a session as a notebook
helioai profile              # edit your profile in $EDITOR

Jupyter

%load_ext helioai.interfaces.jupyter_magic

%%helioai
Download Bz from ACE for the 2003 Halloween storm and plot the storm sudden commencement.

Figures render inline; parameter cards and catalog previews render as styled HTML. This is the surface where the reproducible export matters most — you can keep working on the generated code in the same notebook.

%helioai_export

Web UI

helioai serve --web
# → http://localhost:7890

A three-panel layout: conversation, artifact viewer (figures with a PDF download and lightbox, parameter cards, catalog previews), and a code panel showing the scripts the agent generated. An activity dock streams tool calls, sub-agent spawns and figure reviews live over SSE.

Do not expose this without authentication

run_python executes model-written code. The open-source build binds to localhost and ships no authentication. Read SECURITY.md before putting it on any network.

MCP server

HelioAI exposes its tools over the Model Context Protocol, so any MCP client can drive the heliophysics tooling with its own model.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "helioai": {
      "command": "helioai-mcp"
    }
  }
}

helioai-mcp --http --port 8080

Mounting other MCP servers

The reverse also works: HelioAI is an MCP client, so remote tools join its own registry under an <alias>_ prefix.

HELIOAI_MCP_SERVERS={"alphaxiv": {"command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "mcp-remote", "https://api.alphaxiv.org/mcp/v1"]}}

Both stdio and streamable-HTTP servers are supported; HTTP servers accept a headers object for authentication. Unreachable servers are logged and skipped rather than fatal.

Choosing between them

If you want Use
a quick answer, or scripting CLI one-shot
to iterate on an analysis Jupyter
to show someone the reasoning Web UI
HelioAI's tools with your own agent MCP server