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Show HN: My LLM CLI tool can run tools now, from Python code or plugins

simonwillison.net

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Re: Show HN: My LLM CLI tool can run tools now, from Python code or plugins

#121

Post by rat87 »

bgwalter wrote: post #83
minimaxir wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is happy about the need for prompt engineering and other LLM hacks, but part of being a professional in the real world is doing what works.

Software worked quite well before the plagiarizing chat bots. This is just a new fad like agile, where the process and tool obsessed developers blog and preach endlessly without delivering any results. For them "it works". The rest of us can either join the latest madness or avoid places that use LLMs, which of course includes all open source projects that do actual work that is not measured in GitHub kLOCs and marke…

I don't think software has ever worked "well".

Re: Show HN: My LLM CLI tool can run tools now, from Python code or plugins

#122

Post by johnisgood »

kristopolous wrote: post #80
hanatanaka1984 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simple bash script provides quick command line access to the tool. Output is paged syntax highlighted markdown. echo "$@" | llm "Provide a brief response to the question, if the question is related to command provide the command and short description" | bat --plain -l md Lauch as: llmquick "why is the sky blue?"

I've got a nice tool as well https://github.com/day50-dev/llmehelp/blob/main/Snoopers/wtf I've thought about redoing it because my needs are things like $ ls | wtf which endpoints do these things talk to, give me a map and line numbers. What this will eventually be is "ai-grep" built transparently on https://ast-grep.github.io/ where the llm writes the complicated query (these coding agents all seem to use ripgrep bu…

> DO NOT include the file name. Again, DO NOT INCLUDE THE FILE NAME.

Lmao. Does it work? I hate that it needs to be repeated (in general). ChatGPT could not care less to follow my instructions, through the API it probably would?

Re: Show HN: My LLM CLI tool can run tools now, from Python code or plugins

#123

Post by johnisgood »

tantalor wrote: post #85
shepherdjerred wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any tool can be misused

You're missing the point. Most tools are deployed by humans. If they do something bad, we can blame the human for using the tool badly. And we can predict when a bad choice by the human operator will lead to a bad outcome. Letting the LLM run the tool unsupervised is another thing entirely. We do not understand the choices the machines are making. They are unpredictable and you can't root-cause their decisions. LLM t…

But why can we not hold humans responsible in the case of LLM? You do have to go out of your way to do all of these things with an LLM. And it is the human that does it. It is the humans that give it the permission to act on their behalf. We can definitely hold humans responsible. The question is: are we going to?

Re: Show HN: My LLM CLI tool can run tools now, from Python code or plugins

#124

Post by johnisgood »

simonw wrote: post #118
lynx97 wrote: post #116

This is great! AIUI, llama.cpp does support tools, but I haven't figured out yet what to do to make llm use it. Is there anything I can put into extra-openai-models.yaml to make this work?

That's likely a change that needs to be made to either https://github.com/simonw/llm-gguf or https://github.com/simonw/llm-llama-server ... OK, I got the second one working! brew install llama.cpp llama-server --jinja -hf unsloth/gemma-3-4b-it-GGUF:Q4_K_XL Then in another window: llm install llm-llama-server llm -m llama-server-tools -T llm_time 'what time is it?' --td Wrote it up here: https://simonwillison.net/2025…

Simon, at this point you have a lot of LLM-related tools, and I am not sure which one is outdated, which one is the newest, fanciest stuff, which one is the one that one should use (and when), and so forth.

Is there a blog post / article that addresses this?

Re: Show HN: My LLM CLI tool can run tools now, from Python code or plugins

#125

Post by johnisgood »

tionis wrote: post #27
sorenjan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm using uv tool just like in that issue. I'll keep an eye on it, at least I know it's not just me.

I'm also using uv tools and fixed it by doing something like this to upgrade: uv tool install llm --upgrade --upgrade --with llm-openrouter --with llm-cmd ...

Is the double "--upgrade" a typo?

Re: Show HN: My LLM CLI tool can run tools now, from Python code or plugins

#126

Post by yard2010 »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #81
tantalor wrote: post #33

This greatly opens up the risk of footguns. The doc [1] warns about prompt injection, but I think a more likely scenario is self-inflicted harm. For instance, you give a tool access to your brokerage account to automate trading. Even without prompt injection, there's nothing preventing the bot from making stupid trades. [1] https://llm.datasette.io/en/stable/tools.html

Any tool can be misused

This is not misuse. This is equivalent to a driller that in some cases drills the hand holding it.

Re: Show HN: My LLM CLI tool can run tools now, from Python code or plugins

#127

Post by tionis »

johnisgood wrote: post #125
tionis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also using uv tools and fixed it by doing something like this to upgrade: uv tool install llm --upgrade --upgrade --with llm-openrouter --with llm-cmd ...

Is the double "--upgrade" a typo?

Yes, autocorrect on my phone worked against me

Re: Show HN: My LLM CLI tool can run tools now, from Python code or plugins

#129

Post by simonw »

johnisgood wrote: post #124
simonw wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's likely a change that needs to be made to either https://github.com/simonw/llm-gguf or https://github.com/simonw/llm-llama-server ... OK, I got the second one working! brew install llama.cpp llama-server --jinja -hf unsloth/gemma-3-4b-it-GGUF:Q4_K_XL Then in another window: llm install llm-llama-server llm -m llama-server-tools -T llm_time 'what time is it?' --td Wrote it up here: https://simonwillison.net/2025…

Simon, at this point you have a lot of LLM-related tools, and I am not sure which one is outdated, which one is the newest, fanciest stuff, which one is the one that one should use (and when), and so forth. Is there a blog post / article that addresses this?

For my stuff it's basically just the latest https://llm.datasette.io and its collection of plugins.

If you're interested in what I recommend generally that changes a lot, but my most recent piece about that is here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/May/15/building-on-llms/

Re: Show HN: My LLM CLI tool can run tools now, from Python code or plugins

#130

Post by pollinations »

xk_id wrote: post #102
sillysaurusx wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of crazy this isn’t sci-fi, it’s just how coding is done now. Future generations are going to wonder how we ever got anything done, the same way we wonder how assembly programmers managed to.

The transition from assembly to C was to a different layer of abstraction within the same context of deterministic computation. The transition from programming to LLM prompting is to a qualitatively different context, because the process is no longer deterministic, nor debuggable. So your analogy fails to apply in a meaningful way to this situation.

Why isn't it debuggable?
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