A small CLI for asking AI questions from your terminal.

Motivation • Install • Usage • How it works

Ask a question and get back to your shell:

$ ask how do i find TODO or FIXME comments in srcUse ripgrep: rg -n 'TODO|FIXME' src
$ rg -n 'TODO|FIXME' srcsrc/generated/client.ts:18:// TODO: generated placeholdersrc/generated/schema.ts:204:// FIXME: compatibility shimsrc/api.ts:42:// TODO: retry failed requests
$ ask -c how do i exclude generated filesAdd an exclude: rg -n --glob '!generated/**' 'TODO|FIXME' src
$ rg ...

Or just run ask to start a session:

$ ask
> why is this container restarting?Check its exit code: docker inspect -f '{{.State.ExitCode}}' my-container
> it says 137. what does that mean?Exit code 137 usually means SIGKILL, often from running out of memory.
> thank youYou're welcome.
> ^D
$ ...

Every answer is saved. Use ask -c to continue the latest one in this folder.

Motivation

I made ask because I wanted a normal terminal command for asking AI questions, whichever agent or model I used. I didn't want a TUI. I wanted to ask something, read the answer, and get my shell back.

Coding agents do a lot in the background, and I don't always want that. With ask, the agent stays read-only. I run the commands and make the changes myself. That way I actually learn.

Install

curl -fsSL https://benja.dev/ask/install.sh | sh

The installer supports Intel/ARM Macs and x86_64/ARM64 Linux. It verifies the release checksum and installs to ~/.local/bin/ask. Set ASK_INSTALL_DIR to change the destination.

Usage

ask [QUESTION...] ask once
ask start a session
ask -c [QUESTION...] continue the latest session here
ask --sessions reopen a saved session
ask --settings set defaults for new sessions
ask --upgrade update ask
ask -v print the version

Answers go to stdout. Prompts and errors go to stderr, so one-shot answers are safe to pipe. Agents start in the current directory and run read-only.

ask only checks for updates when you run ask --upgrade.

How it works

Under the hood, ask runs Codex, Claude Code, Pi, or OpenCode using the CLI already installed and logged in on your machine.

For a new session, ask uses your default agent and settings. When you continue a session, it restores the saved agent, settings, and underlying agent session ID. It starts the selected CLI read-only in your current folder, prints the answer to stdout, and saves the turn automatically.

Agents and models

Run ask --settings to choose the default agent and any model it supports. Use /settings inside a session to change its model, reasoning, or answer instructions. Start a new session to switch agents.

Contributing

Requires Rust 1.88 or newer. Before opening a pull request:

cargo fmt --check
cargo test --locked
cargo clippy --locked --all-targets -- -D warnings

Installer changes also need shellcheck install.sh tests/install.sh and sh tests/install.sh.

License

MIT. Have fun :)