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Show HN: Ell – A command-line interface for LLMs written in Bash

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Re: Show HN: Ell – A command-line interface for LLMs written in Bash

#11

Post by llimllib »

I wrote a similar tool I'm no longer maintaining: https://github.com/llimllib/gpt-bash-cli/ . Here are my suggestions:

- save the conversations in a sqlite db. ~everyone has sqlite available and it allows the user to do things with the data more easily than a text file

- use XDG directories instead of suggesting ~/.ellrcd (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory)

- I prefer using system secret stores to environment variables; I don't want to give every program I run access to my API keys. You can see how I did that in my program

Re: Show HN: Ell – A command-line interface for LLMs written in Bash

#12

Post by simonmysun »

mvavassori wrote: post #10

I don't know why i keep getting the error: "FATAL Template not found: ~/.ellrc.d/templates/default-openai.json" after having cloned the repo in my home directory and created the configuration file in .ellrc in my home directory. Don't know, probably i'm doing something wrong... I'm new to bash projects, why does it search for the templates in .ellrc.d? what's the .d part? I don't understand.

Oh sorry that's my bad. The target clone path did not match the default value of template path.

Please make sure you either clone the repo to `~/.ellrc.d` or set ELL_TEMPLATE_PATH to where you store your templates (with `/` at the end) .

Re: Show HN: Ell – A command-line interface for LLMs written in Bash

#14

Post by curry798 »

hacker-l wrote: post #8

Hi, they're also trying to do something similar with shell. I'm not sure who's better. [demo]( https://x-cmd.com/mod/gemini ) [source code]( https://github.com/x-cmd/x-cmd/blob/main/mod/gemini/lib/main )

It looks beautiful and has many features, why are there so few star?

Re: Show HN: Ell – A command-line interface for LLMs written in Bash

#15

Post by simonmysun »

llimllib wrote: post #11

I wrote a similar tool I'm no longer maintaining: https://github.com/llimllib/gpt-bash-cli/ . Here are my suggestions: - save the conversations in a sqlite db. ~everyone has sqlite available and it allows the user to do things with the data more easily than a text file - use XDG directories instead of suggesting ~/.ellrcd ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory ) - I prefer using system secret stores to…

Thanks for the suggestions! I read your code and the support of images is awesome.

I would not assume everyone has sqlite but this can be done optionally with a plugin. Will consider writing a demo for this.

Using XDG directories and system secrets sounds a lot better than what I did. I will learn how to use them and try to integrate them with my code!

Re: Show HN: Ell – A command-line interface for LLMs written in Bash

#17

Post by mvavassori »

simonmysun wrote: post #12
mvavassori wrote: post #10

I don't know why i keep getting the error: "FATAL Template not found: ~/.ellrc.d/templates/default-openai.json" after having cloned the repo in my home directory and created the configuration file in .ellrc in my home directory. Don't know, probably i'm doing something wrong... I'm new to bash projects, why does it search for the templates in .ellrc.d? what's the .d part? I don't understand.

Oh sorry that's my bad. The target clone path did not match the default value of template path. Please make sure you either clone the repo to `~/.ellrc.d` or set ELL_TEMPLATE_PATH to where you store your templates (with `/` at the end) .

Thank you, i always assume there's some magic part that goes on behind the scenes which i don't understand, especially in things i'm not familiar with... In fact it was just a path mismatch as the error suggested.

Re: Show HN: Ell – A command-line interface for LLMs written in Bash

#19

Post by simonmysun »

trescenzi wrote: post #13

Huge fan of Charmbracelet's mods. I've been using it for months now and it works great. Very customizable and the output is clean. https://github.com/charmbracelet/mods

Thank you for letting me know!

It does well with conversation but on the contrary, ell itself is stateless (on the aspect of user input and generate contents). Conversational use of ell depends on `script` to record the terminal output. Though, I can support managing historical dialogs via a plugin with side effects. I need to consider whether this suits the idea and philosophy of ell.

Well, either I'm not good at googling ro google is not good at searching.. I did searched similar projects and never find these powerful tools in practice posted by HN users

Re: Show HN: Ell – A command-line interface for LLMs written in Bash

#20

Post by simonmysun »

mFixman wrote: post #18

The program seems to assume you'll clone it in your home directory, and has paths hardcoded to `~/.ellrc.d/`. This is just bad.

I wouldn't say these paths are hardcoded. They are just default values. You can set the variables manually.

What is hard coded is that it indeed looks for configurations from `$HOME/.ellrc` and `$PWD/.ellrc`, with lowest precedence. Environment variables and command line arguments will overwrite them.

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