GitHub - simonw/llm: Access large language models from the command-line (original) (raw)

LLM

A CLI tool and Python library for interacting with OpenAI, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama and dozens of other Large Language Models, both via remote APIs and with models that can be installed and run on your own machine.

Watch Language models on the command-line on YouTube for a demo or read the accompanying detailed notes.

With LLM you can:

Run prompts from the command-line
Store prompts and responses in SQLite
Generate and store embeddings
Extract structured content from text and images
Grant models the ability to execute tools
… and much, much more

Quick start

First, install LLM using pip or Homebrew or pipx or uv:

Or with Homebrew (see warning note):

Or with pipx:

Or with uv

If you have an OpenAI API key key you can run this:

Paste your OpenAI API key into this

llm keys set openai

Run a prompt (with the default gpt-4o-mini model)

llm "Ten fun names for a pet pelican"

Extract text from an image

llm "extract text" -a scanned-document.jpg

Use a system prompt against a file

cat myfile.py | llm -s "Explain this code"

Run prompts against Gemini or Anthropic with their respective plugins:

llm install llm-gemini llm keys set gemini

Paste Gemini API key here

llm -m gemini-2.0-flash 'Tell me fun facts about Mountain View'

llm install llm-anthropic llm keys set anthropic

Paste Anthropic API key here

llm -m claude-4-opus 'Impress me with wild facts about turnips'

You can also install a plugin to access models that can run on your local device. If you use Ollama:

Install the plugin

llm install llm-ollama

Download and run a prompt against the Orca Mini 7B model

ollama pull llama3.2:latest llm -m llama3.2:latest 'What is the capital of France?'

To start an interactive chat with a model, use llm chat:

Chatting with gpt-4.1
Type 'exit' or 'quit' to exit
Type '!multi' to enter multiple lines, then '!end' to finish
Type '!edit' to open your default editor and modify the prompt.
Type '!fragment <my_fragment> [<another_fragment> ...]' to insert one or more fragments
> Tell me a joke about a pelican
Why don't pelicans like to tip waiters?

Because they always have a big bill!

More background on this project: