MiniMax CLI — Agent Skill Guide

Use mmx to generate text, images, video, speech, transcribe audio, and perform web search via the MiniMax AI platform.

Prerequisites

# Install
npm install -g mmx-cli

# Auth (OAuth persists to ~/.mmx/credentials.json, API key persists to ~/.mmx/config.json)
mmx auth login --api-key sk-xxxxx

# Verify active auth source
mmx auth status

# Or pass per-call
mmx text chat --api-key sk-xxxxx --message "Hello"

Region is auto-detected. Override with --region global or --region cn.

Agent Flags

Always use these flags in non-interactive (agent/CI) contexts:

Commands

text chat

Chat completion. Default model: MiniMax-M3.1-Flash. An explicit --model or saved default-text-model takes precedence. This model currently requires M Plan or MiniMax Code; with a pay-as-you-go key, use --model MiniMax-M3. Thinking is enabled by default with max effort. See the model guide.

mmx text chat --message <text> [flags]

# Single message
mmx text chat --message "user:What is MiniMax?" --output json --quiet

# Multi-turn
mmx text chat \
  --system "You are a coding assistant." \
  --message "user:Write fizzbuzz in Python" \
  --output json

# From file
cat conversation.json | mmx text chat --messages-file - --output json

stdout: response text (text mode) or full response object (json mode).

image generate

Generate images. Model: image-01.

mmx image generate --prompt <text> [flags]

mmx image generate --prompt "A cat in a spacesuit" --output json --quiet
# stdout: image URLs (one per line in quiet mode)

mmx image generate --prompt "Logo" --n 3 --out-dir ./gen/ --quiet
# stdout: saved file paths (one per line)

video generate

Generate video. Default model: MiniMax-Hailuo-2.3 (or MiniMax-Hailuo-2.3-Fast for fast mode with --image). This is an async task — by default it polls until completion.

For MiniMax-H3 — text-to-video, first/last-frame, multimodal reference image/video/audio generation, prompt construction, and failure handling — use the dedicated mmx-h3-video skill instead.

mmx video generate --prompt <text> [flags]

# Non-blocking: get task ID
mmx video generate --prompt "A robot." --async --quiet
# stdout: {"taskId":"..."}

# Blocking: wait and get file path
mmx video generate --prompt "Ocean waves." --download ocean.mp4 --quiet
# stdout: ocean.mp4

video task get

Query status of a video generation task.

mmx video task get --task-id <id> [--output json]

video download

Download a completed video by task ID.

mmx video download --file-id <id> [--out <path>]

speech synthesize

Text-to-speech. Default model: speech-2.8-hd. Max 10k chars.

mmx speech synthesize --text <text> [flags]

mmx speech synthesize --text "Hello world" --out hello.mp3 --quiet
# stdout: hello.mp3

mmx speech synthesize --text "Hello" --subtitles --out hello.mp3
# saves hello.mp3 + hello.srt (SRT subtitle file)

echo "Breaking news." | mmx speech synthesize --text-file - --out news.mp3

speech transcribe

Speech-to-text. Default model: asr-1.0. Accepts wav, aiff, flac, m4a, mp3, aac, opus, and ogg files up to 50 MB and 500 seconds.

mmx speech transcribe --file <path> [flags]

mmx speech transcribe --file meeting.mp3
# stdout: transcript text

mmx speech transcribe --file call.mp3 --language zh --output json
# stdout: {"text":"...","duration":12.3,"trace_id":"..."}

mmx speech transcribe --file talk.mp3 --response-format verbose_json --timestamp-level word --output json
# stdout: adds n_speakers and word-level segments

mmx speech transcribe --file talk.mp3 --response-format srt --out talk.srt
# saves talk.srt; stdout: {"saved":".../talk.srt"}

mmx speech transcribe --file long.mp3 --stream
# stdout: text as it is recognized (add --output text when piping)

Notes:

• mmx speech recognize is an alias for mmx speech transcribe.
• --stream cannot be combined with --out; redirect stdout instead.
• --stream prints deltas only in text output mode. stdout that is not a terminal defaults to json (as everywhere else in this CLI), which accumulates the streamed text into one JSON result — pass --output text to pipe streamed text, e.g. mmx speech transcribe --file long.mp3 --stream --output text > transcript.txt.
• srt / vtt results are subtitle documents and are printed or saved verbatim.
• Without --out, --output json prints the full API response for json / verbose_json. Plain-text output prints the transcript only, so add --output json to read n_speakers and segments.
• A stream that ends without the API's final event raises a warning on stderr, since the transcript may be truncated.
• Input validation (missing file, unsupported format, over 50 MB, --stream with a non-json format) fails before anything is uploaded; the API stays the authority for the 500 s duration limit and codec support.

vision describe

Image understanding via VLM. Provide either --image or --file-id, not both.

mmx vision describe (--image <path-or-url> | --file-id <id>) [flags]

mmx vision describe --image photo.jpg --prompt "What breed?" --output json

stdout: description text (text mode) or full response (json mode).

search query

Web search via MiniMax.

mmx search query --q <query>

mmx search query --q "MiniMax AI" --output json --quiet

quota show

Display Token Plan usage and remaining quotas.

mmx quota show [--output json]

Tool Schema Export

Export all commands as Anthropic/OpenAI-compatible JSON tool schemas:

# All tool-worthy commands (excludes auth/config/update)
mmx config export-schema

# Single command
mmx config export-schema --command "video generate"

Use this to dynamically register mmx commands as tools in your agent framework.

Exit Codes

Piping Patterns

# stdout is always clean data — safe to pipe
mmx text chat --message "Hi" --output json | jq '.content'

# stderr has progress/spinners — discard if needed
mmx video generate --prompt "Waves" 2>/dev/null

# Chain: generate image → describe it
URL=$(mmx image generate --prompt "A sunset" --quiet)
mmx vision describe --image "$URL" --quiet

# Async video workflow
TASK=$(mmx video generate --prompt "A robot" --async --quiet | jq -r '.taskId')
mmx video task get --task-id "$TASK" --output json
mmx video download --task-id "$TASK" --out robot.mp4

Configuration Precedence

CLI flags → environment variables → ~/.mmx/config.json → defaults.

# Persistent config
mmx config set --key region --value cn
mmx config show

# Environment
export MINIMAX_API_KEY=sk-xxxxx
export MINIMAX_REGION=cn

Default Model Configuration

Set per-modality defaults so you don't need --model every time:

# Set defaults
mmx config set --key default-text-model --value MiniMax-M3.1-Flash
mmx config set --key default-speech-model --value speech-2.8-hd
mmx config set --key default-video-model --value MiniMax-Hailuo-2.3

# Use without --model
mmx text chat --message "Hello"
mmx speech synthesize --text "Hello" --out hello.mp3
mmx video generate --prompt "Ocean waves"

# --model still overrides per-call
mmx text chat --model MiniMax-M3.1-Flash --message "Hello"

Resolution priority: --model flag > config default > hardcoded fallback.