AI / LLM Tools

llm (Simon Willison)

# Quick prompt
llm "What is the capital of France?"

# Pipe text for processing
cat article.txt | llm "Summarize this in 3 bullet points"
git diff | llm "Write a commit message for these changes"
pbpaste | llm "Fix the grammar in this text"

# Interactive chat
llm chat

# Use specific model
llm -m claude-3.5-sonnet "Explain quantum computing"
llm -m gpt-4o "Review this code"

# List available models
llm models

# Install model plugins
llm install llm-claude-3
llm install llm-ollama    # local models

# View prompt/response history
llm logs list
llm logs last

aichat

# Quick prompt
aichat "Explain Docker in simple terms"

# Pipe input
cat code.py | aichat "Find bugs in this code"

# Interactive REPL
aichat

# Shell assistant (generates and runs commands)
aichat -e "find all files larger than 100MB"

# Specific model
aichat -m claude-3.5-sonnet "Hello"

# List models
aichat --list-models

Guidelines

• Use

  llm

  for piping text through LLMs (summarize, translate, analyze)
• Use

  aichat -e

  for generating shell commands from natural language
• Both tools store API keys locally — set up once with auth commands

• llm

  has the richest plugin ecosystem (100+ model providers)

• aichat

  is faster (Rust) and has built-in RAG support
• These tools use separate API keys from Claude Code — user pays per token