butterfish-shell

butterfish-shell

Butterfish Shell is an AI-powered command line shell wrapper that integrates OpenAI's GPT models to provide contextual command suggestions, debugging help, and goal-oriented automation directly within bash or zsh shells on MacOS and Linux.

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Free API
#127 in Developer Tools (127 tools)
Added 5 months ago
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Quick Overview

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What it does

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Free

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butterfish-shell

Butterfish Shell is designed for command line users who want to enhance their shell experience with AI assistance. It wraps existing shells like bash and zsh, enabling users to start commands with a capital letter to prompt AI-powered suggestions, explanations, and debugging help using OpenAI's GPT models. The AI has access to the shell history, allowing contextual conversations such as understanding why a command failed or generating new commands. It also supports a Goal Mode where the AI acts as an agent to execute commands to achieve user-defined goals. Butterfish is open source, configurable, and aims to be unobtrusive while improving productivity for developers and command line users.

AI-powered command-line tool for shell prompting and autocompletion.

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Key Features

AI-Powered Command Prompting

Start commands with a capital letter to send prompts to OpenAI's GPT models, receiving contextual help and command generation based on shell history.

Goal Mode

An agent mode where the AI suggests and optionally executes commands to accomplish user goals, with options for safe or unsafe execution.

Autosuggest

GitHub Copilot-like autosuggestions for shell commands based on recent history and AI-generated completions, applied with the Tab key.

Customizable Prompts

Users can edit the prompt wrappers in a YAML configuration file to control the instructions sent to the AI.

Multi-Model Support

Supports different OpenAI models like gpt-4-turbo and gpt-3.5-turbo, and can connect to any OpenAI-compatible API endpoint.

Shell Integration

Works seamlessly with bash and zsh on MacOS and Linux, intercepting shell input/output without interfering with normal workflows.

Verbose Logging and Transparency

Enables verbose mode to log full AI prompts and responses for transparency and debugging.

Neovim Plugin

Includes butterfish.nvim plugin for fluent LLM prompting within Neovim.

Pricing

Free Tier Available

Butterfish itself is open source and free to use, but requires an OpenAI API key which may incur costs depending on your OpenAI subscription and usage.

Use Cases

Contextual Command Debugging

Ask why a previous shell command failed and get AI explanations and fixes without leaving the terminal.

Command Generation

Request AI to generate shell commands for specific tasks, such as finding files or installing dependencies.

Goal-Oriented Automation

Use Goal Mode to have the AI suggest and execute sequences of commands to accomplish complex tasks.

Shell Autocompletion

Receive AI-powered autosuggestions for commands as you type, improving efficiency and reducing errors.

General ChatGPT Interface

Use the shell as a ChatGPT interface for non-shell related queries, like asking for recipes.

Neovim Code Rewriting

Use the butterfish.nvim plugin to prompt LLMs for code rewriting and other programming tasks inside Neovim.

Integrations

OpenAI API

Uses OpenAI's ChatGPT API for AI-powered command suggestions and interactions.

OpenAI-Compatible APIs

Supports any server with an OpenAI-compatible API endpoint, enabling use with local or alternative AI models.

Neovim

Provides a Neovim plugin (butterfish.nvim) for LLM prompting inside the editor.

Benefits

Improves command line productivity with AI-powered contextual assistance.
Reduces the need to switch contexts or copy-paste between terminal and browser.
Customizable and transparent AI prompts for user control and trust.
Supports multiple AI models and local OpenAI-compatible endpoints.
Open source and actively maintained with community feedback.
Seamless integration with existing shells without disrupting workflows.

Limitations

Goal Mode can be hit or miss and may struggle with complex or large file manipulations.
AI suggestions depend on the quality and recency of shell history within token limits.
Requires an OpenAI API key and usage may incur costs.
Unsafe Goal Mode (!!) can execute commands without confirmation and should be used with caution.
History and command outputs are truncated to fit within API token limits, limiting context size.

Frequently Asked Questions

What shells does Butterfish support?
Butterfish supports bash and zsh shells on MacOS and Linux.
How do I prompt the AI in Butterfish Shell?
Start your command with a capital letter to send it as a prompt to the AI.
What is Goal Mode?
Goal Mode allows the AI to suggest and optionally execute commands to accomplish a user-defined goal, triggered by starting a command with '!' or '!!'.
Is Butterfish free to use?
Butterfish is open source and free, but requires an OpenAI API key which may have associated costs.
Can I customize the AI prompts?
Yes, prompts are stored in a YAML file (~/.config/butterfish/prompts.yaml) and can be edited to customize AI behavior.
Does Butterfish interfere with normal shell usage?
Butterfish is designed to be unobtrusive and does not interfere with normal shell workflows, except for adding a prompt emoji and intercepting input starting with capital letters.

Getting Started

  1. 1 Install Butterfish Shell via Homebrew on MacOS or using 'go install' on MacOS/Linux.
  2. 2 Run 'butterfish shell' to start the shell wrapper.
  3. 3 On first run, provide your OpenAI API key when prompted.
  4. 4 Optionally alias 'butterfish' to a shorter command like 'bf' in your shell config.
  5. 5 Start using AI prompts by typing commands starting with a capital letter.
  6. 6 Explore Goal Mode by starting commands with '!' or '!!' for agent-driven automation.

Support

docs

Documentation and usage instructions are available on the GitHub repository.

issue tracker

Users can submit issues and feature requests via the GitHub repository at https://github.com/bakks/butterfish.

API

Available: Yes
Documentation:

Butterfish uses the OpenAI ChatGPT API and supports any OpenAI-compatible API endpoint configurable via the --base-url flag.

Rate Limits:

Butterfish respects OpenAI API token limits (e.g., 4096 tokens for GPT-3.5) and truncates shell history accordingly to fit requests.

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