💻 Enhanced Terminal Experience

• Real-time Streaming: See responses as they're generated with cursor animation
• Rich History Management: Manage histories with 500 entries by default
• Syntax Highlighting: Beautiful code formatting with customizable themes

🛠️ Developer-Friendly

• Layered Configuration: Environment variables > Config file > Sensible defaults
• Debugging Tools: Verbose mode with detailed API tracing

📚 Function Calling & MCP

• Function Calling: Enable function/MCP calling in API requests
• Function Output: Show the output of functions/MCP
• Tool Confirmation: Confirm each tool call before execution — allow once, for the session, permanently, or deny

Full document: https://belingud.github.io/yaicli/

📦 Installation

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10 or higher

Quick Install

# Using pip (recommended for most users)
pip install yaicli

# Using pipx (isolated environment)
pipx install yaicli

# Using uv (faster installation)
uv tool install yaicli

Yaicli has several optional dependencies group, you can copy below commands to install specific dependencies.

# install all denpendencies
pip install 'yaicli[all]'

# install with specific provider support
pip instsall 'yaicli[ollama,cohere,doubao,huggingface,gemini,mistral,anthropic]'

Install by uv.

# install all denpendencies
uv tool install 'yaicli[all]'

# install with specific provider support
uv tool instsall 'yaicli[ollama,cohere,doubao,huggingface,gemini,mistral,anthropic]'

Install from Source

git clone https://github.com/belingud/yaicli.git
cd yaicli
pip install .

Buildin Supported Providers

• AI21
• Anthropic/Claude
• Anthropic Bedrock
• Anthropic Vertex
• Cerebras
• Chatglm
• Chuts
• Cohere
• Cohere Badrock
• Cohere Sagemaker
• Deepseek
• Doubao
• Fireworks
• Gemini
• Groq
• Huggingface
• Longcat
• Longcat Anthropic Format
• Minimax
• Mistral
• ModelScope
• Ollama
• Openai
• Openai Azure
• Sambanova
• Siliconflow
• Spark
• Targon
• Together
• Vertex ai
• X AI
• Yi
• Unlimited OpenAI-compatible providers

⚙️ Configuration

YAICLI uses a simple configuration file to store your preferences and API keys.

First-time Setup

1. Run ai once to generate the default configuration file
2. Edit ~/.config/yaicli/config.ini to add your API key
3. Customize other settings as needed

Configuration File Structure

The default configuration file is located at ~/.config/yaicli/config.ini. You can use ai --template to see default

Configuration Options Reference

Tool execution confirmation: With TOOL_CONFIRM enabled (the default), YAICLI asks before running each tool/function call. At the prompt you can allow it once, allow it for the rest of the session, allow it permanently, or deny it. Permanent approvals are stored per tool name in ~/.config/yaicli/tool_permissions.json. Set TOOL_CONFIRM=false (or YAI_TOOL_CONFIRM=false) to run tool calls silently, as in previous versions. In non-interactive sessions (e.g. piped input) only tools already in the permissions file run; others are denied.

LLM Provider Configuration

YAICLI works with major LLM providers. The default configuration is set up for OpenAI, but you can easily switch to other providers.

Note: blank BASE_URL (or no BASE_URL) means use provider default url.

Pre-configured Provider Settings

Note: Many providers offer OpenAI-compatible endpoints that work with the default settings.

• Google Gemini: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/openai
• Claude: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/api/openai-sdk

If you not sure about base_url or just use the default provider base_url, just leave it blank or delete BASE_URL.

[core]
PROVIDER=cohere
BASE_URL=
API_KEY=xxx
MODEL=command-r-plus

Openai

Yaicli use openai as provider as default provider, gpt-5.2 as default model, you can add your api key to use as it is.

PROVIDER=openai
BASE_URL=
API_KEY=
MODEL=gpt-5.2

Extra params:

# REASONING_EFFORT: [high, midium, low]
REASONING_EFFORT=

See official for more details: https://platform.openai.com/docs/g