Fork Notice: This is a fork of BuilderIO/ai-shell with enhanced features:

• Added Anthropic Claude API support alongside OpenAI
• Changed default behavior to silent mode (no explanations by default)
• Added -e/--explain flag for verbose mode with detailed explanations

A CLI that converts natural language to shell commands.

Inspired by the GitHub Copilot X CLI, but open source for everyone.

The minimum supported version of Node.js is v14

1. Get your API key from either:

   • OpenAI for GPT models
   • Anthropic for Claude models

   Note: You'll need to create an account and set up billing with your chosen provider.

2. Configure ai-shell with your API key and provider:

   # For OpenAI (default) ai config set AI_API_KEY=<your openai token> ai config set AI_PROVIDER=openai # For Anthropic Claude ai config set AI_API_KEY=<your anthropic token> ai config set AI_PROVIDER=anthropic

   This will create a .ai-shell file in your home directory.

ai <prompt>

For example:

ai list all log files

Then you will get an output like this, where you can choose to run the suggested command, revise the command via a prompt, or cancel:

◇ Your script: │ │ find . -name "*.log" │ ◆ Run this script? │ ● ✅ Yes (Lets go!) │ ○ 📝 Revise │ ○ ❌ Cancel └

To see detailed explanations, use the -e flag:

ai -e list all log files

This will show:

◇ Your script: │ │ find . -name "*.log" │ ◇ Explanation: │ │ 1. Searches for all files with the extension ".log" in the current directory and any subdirectories. │ ◆ Run this script? │ ● ✅ Yes (Lets go!) │ ○ 📝 Revise │ ○ ❌ Cancel └

AI Shell supports several command-line flags:

• -e, --explain: Show detailed explanations (verbose mode)
• -p, --prompt <string>: Specify prompt directly as argument
• --version: Show version information
• --help: Show help information

Note that some shells handle certain characters like the ? or * or things that look like file paths specially. If you are getting strange behaviors, you can wrap the prompt in quotes to avoid issues, like below:

ai 'what is my ip address'

ai chat

With this mode, you can engage in a conversation with the AI and receive helpful responses in a natural, conversational manner directly through the CLI:

┌ Starting new conversation │ ◇ You: │ how do I serve a redirect in express │ ◇ AI Shell: In Express, you can use the `redirect()` method to serve a redirect. The `redirect()` method takes one argument, which is the URL that you want to redirect to.  Here's an example:  \`\`\`js app.get('/oldurl', (req, res) => {  res.redirect('/newurl'); }); \`\`\`

By default, AI Shell runs in silent mode (shows only the generated command). You can enable detailed explanations using the -e or --explain flag:

ai -e list all log files

or save verbose mode as a preference using this command:

ai config set SILENT_MODE=false

You can set a custom API endpoint (useful for proxies or alternative endpoints):

# For OpenAI (default: https://api.openai.com/v1) ai config set AI_API_ENDPOINT=<your proxy endpoint> # For Anthropic (default: https://api.anthropic.com) ai config set AI_API_ENDPOINT=<your proxy endpoint>

The AI Shell's default language is English, but you can easily switch to your preferred language by using the corresponding language keys, as shown below:

For instance, if you want to switch to Simplified Chinese, you can do so by setting the LANGUAGE value to zh-Hans:

ai config set LANGUAGE=zh-Hans

This will set your language to Simplified Chinese.

To use a more visual interface to view and set config options you can type:

ai config

To get an interactive UI like below:

◆ Set config: │ ○ AI API Key │ ○ AI Provider │ ○ AI API Endpoint │ ○ Silent Mode │ ● Model (gpt-4o-mini) │ ○ Language │ ○ Cancel └

Some users are reporting a 429 error from their AI provider. This is due to incorrect billing setup or excessive quota usage.

For OpenAI: Please follow this guide to fix it. You can activate billing at this link.

For Anthropic: Check your usage and billing at Anthropic Console.

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

If you want to help fix a bug or implement a feature in Issues (tip: look out for the help wanted label), checkout the Contribution Guide to learn how to setup the project.

• OpenAI: GPT-4, GPT-4o, GPT-4o-mini, and other OpenAI models
  • Default model: gpt-4o-mini
• Anthropic: Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Opus, Claude Sonnet 4
  • Default model: claude-sonnet-4-20250514

• Thanks to GitHub Copilot for their amazing tools and the idea for this.
• Thanks to Hassan and his work on aicommits, which inspired the workflow and some parts of the code and flows
• Thanks to Anthropic for providing Claude AI capabilities