Distill
Rust coding agent harness: Jev routes reasoning consults, effort, and utility summaries; fail-open; Distill owns tool permissions.
Overview
Distill (github.com/samuelfaj/distill, Apache-2.0) is Samuel Fajreldines's Rust agent harness and TUI built to stretch subscription and API budgets. docs/jev-routing.md documents Jev as the decision layer over harness-assembled state: Plan, Step, and Review batteries decide when the optional reasoning model consults, what effort level applies, and how tool results get summarized versus cited. Distill owns permissions, YOLO, and auto-approval; Jev cannot approve or veto tool calls. Fail-open behavior keeps the main model path when Jev errors or lacks confidence. Main, reasoning, and utility model tiers are configured separately on the home screen.
Problem: Coding agent sessions burn tokens when every step re-sends full transcripts to huge models for routing, effort, and compression choices.
Built for: Developers running Distill with Grok, Codex, or OpenRouter who want Jev to decide model tier, reasoning consults, and utility payloads without granting Jev tool approval power.
First indexed on Jev Directory: 2026-09-24
Creator and team
- Name
- Samuel Fajreldines
- Handle
- @samuelfaj
How Jev is used
- Role in the product flow
- Routing and consult gating for reasoning model, effort, and utility summarization
- Primitives
- ChoiceScoreNoul
- State in
- Bounded payloads such as tool results, struggle signals, diffs, and complexity flags described per Plan, Step, and Review tables in docs/jev-routing.md.
- Decision out
- Whether to consult reasoning model, review verdicts, per-item full versus summary inclusion, and optional effort picks with documented confidence floors (0.40 effort, 0.55 plan).
- Main model runs every session step
- Jev Plan decision on first round when reasoning model configured
- Jev Step and Review decisions gate consults before delivery
- Utility model handles cite_spans compression when windows overflow
Distill is an unusually explicit map of where Jev saves tokens versus where the harness must stay deterministic. nidhi-singh02-agent-router ranks agents and models up front; y0usaf-pi-jev gates bash and edits inside Pi; jkudish-jev-mcp exposes typed tools to external clients. Distill keeps Jev on consult and compression policy inside its own TUI loop. Do not confuse with bespokelabsai-nimble model distillation; this repo name is the agent harness. Read docs/token-saver.md alongside jev-routing.md when you explain ROI to your team.
Sourced performance claims
- docs/jev-routing.md states Jev chooses among candidates supplied by code, does not invent tools, and cannot approve or hold tool calls.Source: github.com/samuelfaj/distill docs/jev-routing.md
- Effort auto merges effort selection with reasoning consult questions for one Jev call per round when enabled.Source: github.com/samuelfaj/distill docs/jev-routing.md
- Public GitHub repo samuelfaj/distill had 688 stars and 44 forks when this listing was drafted.Source: GitHub API September 2026
Features and stack
Features
- Plan, Step, and Review Jev batteries for reasoning consults
- Fail-open when Jev times out or lacks confidence
- Separate main, reasoning, and utility model tiers
- GROK_LOG_JEV=1 debug logging for tuning questions
- curl and PowerShell installers for macOS, Linux, and Windows
Stack
- Rust
- TUI
- OpenRouter
- Codex and Grok subscriptions
Pricing: Open source harness; you pay model providers plus any TypeSafe Jev calls Distill issues.
Links
FAQ
- Can Jev block a dangerous tool call in Distill?
- No. docs/jev-routing.md says Distill owns permission policy and Jev cannot approve, veto, or hold confirmations.
- What happens if Jev fails mid-session?
- The harness documents fail-open behavior: the main model continues and consults may be skipped when decisions error or lack confidence.
- Is this the same as Bespoke Nimble distillation?
- No. Nimble trains open classifiers. Distill is a coding agent harness that calls Jev for routing and consult decisions at runtime.
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