Thing

Thing is a production-oriented, cross-platform CLI that maps natural language to trusted command recipes.

Thing is intentionally non-AI at runtime:

• deterministic parser pipeline
• registry-backed capabilities
• typed entity extraction
• explicit validation + safety gates
• no free-form shell generation

Why Thing

Most command helpers either require memorizing syntax or rely on runtime LLM command synthesis. Thing gives you plain English while preserving trust, reproducibility, and control.

Core Guarantees

• No runtime LLM command generation.
• No sh -c execution for natural-language mode.
• Only registered capabilities can run.
• Every execution plan is structured (executable, args, safety, deps).
• Ambiguity is surfaced, not silently guessed.

Quick Start

# one-time full install (dependencies + build + install binary)
./scripts/install.sh

# examples
thing "convert this file to mp4" --file ./input.mov
thing "extract audio from this video" --file ./demo.mp4
thing "resize all pngs in this folder to 512x512" --folder ./images
thing "zip this project except node_modules" --folder .
thing "find files larger than 500mb"
thing /gui

Windows (PowerShell):

./scripts/install-deps.ps1
go build -o thing.exe ./cmd/thing

Explainability

thing "download subtitles for this video" --url "https://..." --dry-run --explain
thing explain "zip this project except node_modules" --folder .
thing "convert clip to mp4" --json --dry-run

Explain output includes:

• normalized request
• matched capability
• confidence
• extracted entities
• missing slots
• recipe and executable args
• safety class
• parser trace

Terminal Preview (Mock)

████████╗██╗  ██╗██╗███╗   ██╗ ██████╗
╚══██╔══╝██║  ██║██║████╗  ██║██╔════╝
   ██║   ███████║██║██╔██╗ ██║██║  ███╗
   ██║   ██╔══██║██║██║╚██╗██║██║   ██║
   ██║   ██║  ██║██║██║ ╚████║╚██████╔╝
   ╚═╝   ╚═╝  ╚═╝╚═╝╚═╝  ╚═══╝ ╚═════╝

Plain English for your terminal. Deterministic. Safe. No runtime AI.

◉ Parsing request
○ Detecting intent
○ Resolving files
○ Checking dependencies
○ Building command plan
○ Ready to run

GUI Mode

thing /gui starts a localhost-only web app.

Features:

• search/filter capabilities
• request input + file/folder/url parameters
• parsed intent preview
• command plan preview
• dependency status
• history endpoint

Dependency Matrix

Thing auto-detects:

• ffmpeg / ffprobe
• ImageMagick (magick)
• exiftool
• yt-dlp
• rg
• fzf
• zip/unzip/tar
• git
• curl

Use:

thing doctor

Commands

• thing [natural language]
• thing (interactive REPL)
• thing /gui
• thing explain "..."
• thing doctor
• thing recipes
• thing capabilities
• thing history
• thing config
• thing version
• thing completion [bash|zsh|fish|powershell]

Supported Capabilities

100 baseline capabilities across:

• media (FFmpeg/ffprobe)
• images (ImageMagick)
• metadata (ExifTool)
• downloads (yt-dlp)
• archives/files (zip/tar/rg/fzf)
• network/dev (curl/git/system)

See CAPABILITIES.md.

Safety

See SAFETY.md for levels and confirmation policy.

Architecture

See ARCHITECTURE.md.

Roadmap

v1.1

• More recipe coverage for all 100 capabilities
• richer disambiguation TUI flows
• stronger context memory for pronouns (this, again, same folder)

v1.2

• plugin SDK for third-party capabilities
• learnable aliases (thing learn ...)
• advanced GUI execution timeline and run replay