ai-cli

AI CLI

A command-line interface for interacting with various AI providers and models.

Features

• Multiple AI providers (Ollama, LocalAI) with a pluggable registry
• Interactive chat mode with conversation history
• Streaming responses for both single prompts and interactive mode
• System prompts and preset personas (creative, concise, code)
• Configurable default provider
• Graceful cancellation via Ctrl+C / SIGTERM

Installation

git clone https://github.com/ahr9n/ai-cli.git
cd ai-cli
make build
make install

Requirements

• Go 1.24 or later
• At least one provider running locally:
  • Ollama — local LLM runtime
  • LocalAI — self-hosted OpenAI-compatible server

Usage

Single prompt

ai-cli ollama "What is the capital of Palestine?"
ai-cli localai "What is the old capital of Egypt?"
ai-cli ollama --model llama3 "What is AI CLI?"

Interactive mode

ai-cli ollama -i
ai-cli ollama -i --max-history 10

In interactive mode, type exit or quit to end the session, and clear to reset conversation history.

System prompts

ai-cli ollama -s "You are a math tutor" "Explain calculus"
ai-cli ollama -p creative "Tell me a story about a robot"
ai-cli ollama -p code "Explain binary search"

Available presets: creative, concise, code.

Default provider

ai-cli default set ollama
ai-cli default set localai --url http://custom:8080
ai-cli default show
ai-cli default clear

With a default provider set, prompts work directly:

ai-cli "Hello, world"

Other commands

ai-cli version
ai-cli providers
ai-cli ollama --list-models
ai-cli ollama -u http://localhost:8080 "Hello"

Project Structure

cmd/ai-cli/main.go          Entrypoint: signal handling, context setup
internal/
├── cli/                     Cobra command wiring, chat loop, config persistence
├── api/                     Shared HTTP client (BaseClient, CheckStatus, HTTPError)
├── provider/                Provider interface, registry, error types
│   ├── ollama/              Ollama implementation (self-registers via init)
│   └── localai/             LocalAI implementation (self-registers via init)
├── prompt/                  System prompt constants
└── loader/                  Terminal spinner (stderr, TTY-aware)

Providers register themselves at import time. Adding a new provider means creating a package under internal/provider/<name>/ with an init() that calls provider.Register(...) and a blank import in internal/cli/provider.go.

Development

make build     # Build to bin/ai-cli (injects version via ldflags)
make test      # Run all tests with race detector
make format    # go fmt + go vet
make clean     # Remove build artifacts

License

See LICENSE.