What Happens When You Add AI to Your Terminal? A Personal Experiment

A Simple Idea

I wanted to try adding AI to a CLI tool to see how easy it would be. The idea was simple: instead of looking up command syntax, just ask the terminal in plain English.

Building It

Here's the basic implementation using OpenAI's API, which than got ported to pulp-cli:

import json
import click
import requests

@click.command()
@click.argument("question", type=str)
@click.option("--api-key", envvar="OPENAI_API_KEY", help="OpenAI API key")
@click.option("--model", default="gpt-3.5-turbo", help="ChatGPT model to use")
def ask(question, api_key, model):
    """Ask a question to ChatGPT and get a response."""

    if not api_key:
        raise click.ClickException("OpenAI API key is required")

    url = "https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions"
    headers = {
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {api_key}",
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
    }

    payload = {
        "model": model,
        "messages": [
            {"role": "user", "content": question}
        ],
        "max_tokens": 150,
        "temperature": 0.7,
    }

    try:
        response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=payload, timeout=30)
        response.raise_for_status()

        result = response.json()
        answer = result["choices"][0]["message"]["content"].strip()
        click.echo(answer)

    except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
        raise click.ClickException(f"API request failed: {str(e)}")
    except (json.JSONDecodeError, KeyError):
        raise click.ClickException("Failed to parse API response")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    ask()

Usage Examples

# Set your API key
export OPENAI_API_KEY="your-api-key-here"

# Ask questions
python3 openai.py "how do I list files in linux"
python3 openai.py "explain git rebase"

# Or pass the API key directly
python3 openai.py --api-key "your-key" "what is docker"

For Pulp CLI integration:

# Ask about repository management
pulp console chat ask "How do I create an RPM repository?"

# Get help with workflows
pulp console chat ask --model gpt-4.1 "How do I sync and publish content?"

# Troubleshooting
pulp console chat ask "Why is my sync failing with authentication errors?"

How Easy It Is

It's straightforward to execute, using the OpenAI documentation. The actual implementation includes additional features like:

• Multiple output formats (JSON/text)
• Model selection options
• Configurable response parameters
• Better error handling

You can add this to any CLI tool by: 1. Adding the chat command to your CLI framework 2. Setting up the OpenAI API integration 3. Handling API keys and error cases

The full implementation is available in the Pulp CLI Console extension - check out https://github.com/pulp/pulp-cli-console/blob/pulp-cli-ai-experiment/pulpcore/cli/console/chat.py.