aisk

A fast, minimal CLI to ask questions to any LLM from your terminal.

aisk ge31lite "explain monads in Haskell"

Features

• Streaming responses — tokens appear as they arrive
• Reasoning support — shows thinking tokens for models like o4-mini, DeepSeek-R1
• Model aliases — short names for long model IDs (ge31lite → google/gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview)
• Pass-through models — use any model directly: aisk perplexity/sonar "query"
• Quiet mode — -q strips all decoration, perfect for piping
• Buffered mode — -S prints the full response at the end instead of streaming
• Stdin support — echo "explain this" | aisk cls46
• OpenAI-compatible — works with OpenRouter (default), or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint
• Zero config — just set your API key and go

Install

# One-liner (installs uv if needed, upgrades if already installed)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Ymx1ZQ/aisk/main/install.sh | bash

Or manually:

# From GitHub
uv tool install git+ssh://git@github.com/Ymx1ZQ/aisk.git

# From local clone
git clone git@github.com:Ymx1ZQ/aisk.git
cd aisk
uv tool install .

Setup

No explicit setup needed. On first run, aisk detects the missing configuration and launches the setup wizard automatically:

aisk ge31lite "hello world"
# → First run detected — launching setup wizard...
# → Asks for endpoint and API key, then runs your query

To reconfigure later:

aisk init

The wizard will:

1. Ask for the API endpoint (default: OpenRouter, press Enter to accept)
2. Ask for your API key
3. If config already exists, ask whether to overwrite

Configuration

~/.aisk/.env — API key (loaded automatically):

AISK_API_KEY=sk-or-...

~/.aisk/conf.toml — endpoint and model aliases:

[api]
endpoint = "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions"

[aliases]
ge31lite = "google/gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview"
cls46 = "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.6"
# ... add your own

Usage

# Ask a question (verbose mode, default)
aisk ge31lite "what is the CAP theorem?"

# No quotes needed — all words after the model are joined automatically
aisk ge31lite what is the CAP theorem

# Use quotes if your message contains shell special characters: () ! > | &
aisk glm51 "what is f(x) = x^2 + (x-1)?"

# Use single quotes for backticks
aisk ge31lite 'explain the `ls -la` command'

# Quiet mode — only the LLM response, no decoration
aisk -q cls46 "translate to English: buongiorno"

# Buffered mode — print full response at the end (no progressive streaming)
aisk -S ge31lite "explain monads"

# Combine: quiet + buffered — ideal for scripts
aisk -q -S cls46 "translate to English: buongiorno" | wc -w

# Pipe from stdin
echo "summarize this" | aisk gpt5mini

# Search with Perplexity
aisk s what is the mass of the sun
aisk sps "latest news on Rust 2026"

# Use a full model name directly (no alias needed)
aisk perplexity/sonar "latest news on Rust 2026"

# List available aliases (grouped by provider)
aisk models

# Show version
aisk --version

Verbose output (default)

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 Model: google/gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview | User: what is the CAP theorem?
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
► ANSWER
The CAP theorem states that a distributed system can only guarantee
two of three properties simultaneously: Consistency, Availability,
and Partition tolerance...


──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Tokens: In 12 | Out 234 (Reasoning: 0) | Cost: $0.000456
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Quiet output (-q)

The CAP theorem states that a distributed system can only guarantee
two of three properties simultaneously: Consistency, Availability,
and Partition tolerance...

Shell Shortcuts

Define short shell functions that call aisk with a specific model. Configure them in ~/.aisk/conf.toml:

[shortcuts]
ds = "dsv4f"
sps = "sps"
# gpt = "gpt55"
# cl = "cls46"
# ge = "ge25flash"

Each shortcut becomes a shell function (e.g. ds "question" → aisk dsv4f "question"), loaded automatically via eval "$(aisk completions bash)".

# See generated functions
aisk shortcuts

# Use directly
ds what is the CAP theorem
sps latest news on Rust 2026

Shell Completions

Tab-completion for model aliases and subcommands. Installed automatically by install.sh.

# Install manually (appends to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc)
aisk completions install

# Refresh after changing aliases/shortcuts in conf.toml
eval "$(aisk completions refresh)"

Or add manually to your shell rc file:

# Bash — add to ~/.bashrc
eval "$(aisk completions bash)"

# Zsh — add to ~/.zshrc
eval "$(aisk completions zsh)"

Dependencies

Minimal by design:

• httpx — streaming HTTP
• python-dotenv — loads .env
• tomli — TOML parser (Python <3.11 only; 3.11+ uses stdlib tomllib)

License

MIT