Natural language to live shell commands — OpenAI & Anthropic.

Chat with the model and run suggested commands in your shell in one seamless flow.

Requires Ruby 3.0+

1. Install aicli:

   gem install aicli

   Or from this repository:

   bundle install
   bundle exec rake install
   # or
   gem build aicli.gemspec && gem install ./aicli-*.gem

2. Choose a provider and set the matching API key.

   OpenAI (default) — key from OpenAI:

   aicli config set PROVIDER=openai
   aicli config set OPENAI_KEY=<your token>

   Anthropic — key from Anthropic:

   aicli config set PROVIDER=anthropic
   aicli config set ANTHROPIC_KEY=<your token>

   Or use the interactive UI (aicli config) to pick provider, key, and model. Model lists come from the RubyLLM registry.

   Config lives in ~/.aicli/config. Chat/prompt history is stored in ~/.aicli/context (last 40 messages) and reloaded on the next run.

aicli <prompt>

For example:

aicli list all log files

Then you will get an output where you can choose to run the suggested command, revise it via a prompt, edit it, copy it, or cancel.

The short alias ai is also available.

Some shells handle characters like ? or * specially. Wrap the prompt in quotes if needed:

aicli 'what is my ip address'

aicli chat

Ask for shell commands in a multi-turn conversation. When the assistant suggests a command in a code fence, you are asked whether to run it; after it runs (or you decline), chat continues. Press Ctrl+d to quit.

aicli -s list all log files

Or save the preference:

aicli config set SILENT_MODE=true

aicli config set PROVIDER=openai      # or anthropic
aicli config set MODEL=gpt-4o-mini    # provider-specific model id

Defaults: gpt-4o-mini (OpenAI), claude-sonnet-4-6 (Anthropic).

LLM calls go through RubyLLM, so chat streaming and model metadata stay provider-agnostic.

Useful for OpenAI-compatible proxies (ignored for Anthropic):

aicli config set OPENAI_API_ENDPOINT=<your proxy endpoint>

Default: https://api.openai.com/v1

aicli config set LANGUAGE=zh-Hans

aicli config

aicli --version
gem update aicli

Or:

aicli update

Run the local checkout (not the installed gem) with Bundler from this directory:

bundle install

bundle exec bin/ai --help
bundle exec bin/ai config
bundle exec bin/ai chat
bundle exec bin/ai list all log files

bin/aicli is equivalent to bin/ai. bundle exec loads dependencies from the Gemfile and code from lib/.

Example config for local testing:

bundle exec bin/ai config set PROVIDER=openai
bundle exec bin/ai config set OPENAI_KEY=<your token>
# or: PROVIDER=anthropic + ANTHROPIC_KEY=<your token>

Usually billing or quota on the configured provider (OpenAI or Anthropic). Check that provider’s console billing page and that the matching API key is set in ~/.aicli/config.

I am not a bash wizard, and am dying for access to the copilot CLI, and got impatient.

Started from BuilderIO/ai-shell (MIT; copyright Builder.io 2023).