ccline: I used the Anthropic SDK to build AI at the zsh prompt — type English, get answers

[jianshuo]

Hey Anthropic SDK community! 🤖

If you're using the Anthropic Python SDK, you're building with Claude. I used that same SDK to build something for my own terminal workflow.

It's ccline — Claude at the zsh prompt.

What it does

ccline hijacks zsh's command_not_found_handler. When you type something that isn't a real command — plain English, a question — it calls the Anthropic API (specifically claude-3-5-haiku-20241022 for speed and cost) and renders the answer as Markdown in your terminal. Press Enter to run suggested commands.

$ show my anthropic api usage for today
→ [ccline can't check your API dashboard but can explain how to use the admin API]

$ make an api call with streaming in python
→ with client.messages.stream(...) as stream:
→     for text in stream.text_stream:
→         print(text, end="", flush=True)
→ [press Enter... well, into a file first!]

$ install the anthropic sdk with tool use support
→ pip install anthropic
→ [press Enter to run]

The tool you use to build AI apps — I also used it to build an AI shell assistant. Full source at the link below.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jianshuo/ccline/main/install.sh | bash

Requires your ANTHROPIC_API_KEY.

→ https://github.com/jianshuo/ccline