sai

A tiny CLI that translates a natural-language request into a shell command. You stay the approval gate — sai only proposes; the shell runs.

$ sai list files in cwd sorted by date
ls -lt

The command is printed to stdout and copied to your clipboard (configurable), so you can paste, edit, or run it however you like. Or wire up the Alt-Enter keybinding to have sai rewrite your prompt buffer in place.

Installation

Requires Crystal and just.

git clone https://github.com/trans/sai
cd sai
just install                 # → /usr/local/bin/sai
PREFIX=~/.local just install # → ~/.local/bin/sai

Then export your Anthropic API key:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

Usage

sai <natural language query>

Examples:

sai count lines of Crystal code in src
sai find files modified in the last day
sai rename all jpg files in this folder to lowercase
sai show the largest 10 files under home

sai prints the proposed command (no trailing newline, so the clipboard content is ready to paste cleanly) and exits.

Flags

Flag	Effect
-n, --dry-run	Print the model + full prompt that would be sent, then exit. No API call.
--copy	Force clipboard copy on (overrides SAI_CLIPBOARD).
--no-copy	Force clipboard copy off.
-h, --help	Show help.
-v, --version	Show version.

Environment variables

Variable	Purpose
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	Required.
SAI_MODEL	Override the default model (claude-haiku-4-5-20251001).
SAI_CLIPBOARD	Set to 0/off/false/no to disable clipboard copy by default.
SAI_PROMPT_FILE	Override the prompt addendum path (default: ~/.config/sai/prompt.md).

Shell integration (Alt-Enter)

The keybinding lets you type a natural-language query straight at your prompt, hit Alt-Enter, and have it rewritten as the shell command — ready to edit or run.

fish — ~/.config/fish/config.fish:

function sai-replace
    set -l query (commandline)
    test -z "$query"; and return
    set -l result (sai -- $query)
    commandline -r -- $result
end
function fish_user_key_bindings
    bind \e\r sai-replace
end

bash — ~/.bashrc:

_sai_replace() {
    [[ -z "$READLINE_LINE" ]] && return
    READLINE_LINE="$(sai -- "$READLINE_LINE")"
    READLINE_POINT=${#READLINE_LINE}
}
bind -x '"\e\r": _sai_replace'

zsh — ~/.zshrc:

_sai_replace() {
    [[ -z "$BUFFER" ]] && return
    BUFFER="$(sai -- "$BUFFER")"
    CURSOR=${#BUFFER}
}
zle -N _sai_replace
bindkey '^[^M' _sai_replace

If Alt-Enter is already taken by your terminal or another binding, change the key sequence to taste (\cg, \e;, ^[^M, etc.).

Context sent to the model

Every call includes lightweight environment context so suggestions match your system:

OS: CachyOS
Kernel: 6.19.12-1-cachyos
Arch: x86_64
Shell: fish
CWD: /home/you/Projects/foo
HOME: /home/you
Editor: nvim

Inspect exactly what gets sent with sai --dry-run <query>.

Prompt addendum

Drop a file at ~/.config/sai/prompt.md (or anywhere, pointed to by SAI_PROMPT_FILE) to append your own preferences to the system prompt. Content is sent verbatim — what you write is what the model sees.

Example:

Prefer eza over ls, fd over find, rg over grep, bat over cat.
On this machine, pacman is the package manager.
Avoid sudo unless the request clearly requires it.

sai --dry-run will show your addendum in the rendered system prompt so you can verify it's loading.

Development

just build       # release binary at bin/sai
just build-debug # debug build
just run -- <query>
just test
just fmt
just check       # fmt --check + spec
just clean

License

MIT — see LICENSE.