Butterfish

Butterfish: AI-Powered CLI Tools for Software Engineers

Butterfish is an open-source command-line tool designed to enhance your shell experience with AI. It integrates with OpenAI (or compatible APIs) to provide intelligent suggestions, contextual help, and automated goal execution directly within your terminal. Think of it as GitHub Copilot, but for your shell.

What is Butterfish?

Butterfish is designed for users who frequently work from the command line. It enhances your existing shell (like Bash or Zsh) by adding AI prompting capabilities using OpenAI or compatible APIs. The primary goal is to provide context-aware AI assistance without the need to copy and paste information manually.

How does Butterfish work?

Butterfish operates as a shell wrapper, intercepting input and output to provide AI-driven assistance. When you initiate a command with a capital letter, Butterfish recognizes it as an AI prompt. The tool then sends this prompt, along with your shell history, to the configured AI model. The AI processes the information and provides suggestions, answers, or automated commands, which are then displayed in your terminal.

Key Features

• AI Prompting: Start commands with a capital letter to trigger AI assistance. Butterfish sends the command and your shell history to ChatGPT.
• Contextual Awareness: Butterfish includes your shell history in the AI prompt, allowing you to ask questions like "Why did that command fail?"
• GPT Autosuggest: Similar to GitHub Copilot, Butterfish suggests commands as you type, which you can accept with the Tab key.
• Goal Mode: Initiate Goal Mode with ! to have the AI agent execute commands to achieve a specified goal. Use !! for unattended execution (use with caution).
• Customizable Prompts: Control the language used to guide the AI model by editing the prompts.yaml file.
• Transparent Prompts: View raw AI requests and responses by running Butterfish in verbose mode (butterfish shell -v).
• Other Model Providers: Use other OpenAI-compatible API servers by specifying the --base-url flag.

Installation

Butterfish supports macOS and Linux and can be installed via Homebrew on macOS:

brew install bakks/bakks/butterfish

Or via go install:

go install github.com/bakks/butterfish/cmd/butterfish@latest
$(go env GOPATH)/bin/butterfish shell

The first time you run Butterfish, you'll be prompted to enter your OpenAI API key, which will be stored in ~/.config/butterfish/butterfish.env.

How to Use Butterfish

1. Start Butterfish Shell:

   butterfish shell
   

2. Interact with AI:

   • Type commands as usual.

   • Start a command with a capital letter to prompt the AI:

     Summarize the file I just printed
     

   • Use Goal Mode to automate tasks:

     !Run pip install in this directory and debug any problems
     

Example Use Cases

• Generate Commands: Ask Butterfish to provide a command for a specific task, such as converting a file format or listing files recursively.

• Debug Errors: Use Butterfish to understand why a command failed, providing context from your shell history.

• Automate Tasks: Use Goal Mode to have Butterfish execute a series of commands to achieve a specific outcome, such as installing dependencies or debugging code.

Benefits

• Increased Productivity: Automate repetitive tasks and quickly find the right commands.
• Improved Understanding: Get contextual explanations of command behavior and errors.
• Customizable Experience: Tailor the AI prompts and behavior to your specific needs.

Who is Butterfish for?

Butterfish is ideal for software engineers, system administrators, and anyone who spends a significant amount of time working in the command line. It enhances productivity and provides a more intuitive way to interact with the shell.

Butterfish enhances command-line workflows by providing AI-driven assistance directly in the terminal. Its ability to provide contextual help, automate tasks, and offer intelligent suggestions makes it a valuable tool for developers and system administrators looking to boost their productivity.