bai

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

$ bai 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 bai rewrite your prompt buffer in place.

Installation

Requires Crystal and just.

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

Then export your Anthropic API key:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

Usage

bai <natural language query>

Examples:

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

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

Flags

Environment variables

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

bash — ~/.bashrc:

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

zsh — ~/.zshrc:

_bai_replace() {
    [[ -z "$BUFFER" ]] && return
    BUFFER="$(bai -- "$BUFFER")"
    CURSOR=${#BUFFER}
}
zle -N _bai_replace
bindkey '^[^M' _bai_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 bai --dry-run <query>.

Prompt addendum

Drop a file at ~/.config/bai/prompt.md (or anywhere, pointed to by BAI_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.

bai --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/bai
just build-debug # debug build
just docs-api    # generate HTML API docs at docs/api
just pkg-src     # snapshot tracked files into pkg/bai-<version>.tar.gz
just pkg-arch    # build an Arch package in pkg/
just pkg-deb     # build Debian package artifacts in pkg/
just run -- <query>
just test
just fmt
just check       # fmt --check + spec
just clean

License

MIT — see LICENSE.