AI CLI

Use Case 1: Natural Language Command Generation

Problem: Developers and system administrators often need to perform complex tasks (like finding specific files by date or managing network ports) but may not remember the exact syntax for advanced Bash commands or flags.
Solution: CLAI includes skills like nlc2cmd and tellina that translate natural language descriptions into executable shell commands. This eliminates the need to search the web for syntax, keeping the developer focused on the terminal.
Example: A user types clai "find all files larger than 50MB and list them by size". CLAI processes the request and suggests: find . -type f -size +50M -exec ls -lh {} + | sort -k 5 -hr. The user can then hit enter to execute it.

Use Case 2: Intelligent Error Troubleshooting and "Fix-it"

Problem: When a command fails with an obscure stderr message, developers often have to copy-paste the error into a search engine to find the cause and a potential fix.
Solution: CLAI monitors the terminal for execution errors. Its fixit skill analyzes the error message and the attempted command to suggest an immediate correction or an alternative command that resolves the issue.
Example: A developer tries to push code and receives an error because the upstream branch isn't set. CLAI detects the error and prompts: "It looks like you need to set the upstream. Would you like me to run: git push --set-upstream origin main? [Y/n]"

Use Case 3: On-the-Fly Terminal Documentation and Learning

Problem: Traditional man pages are often long, technical, and difficult to navigate quickly when a user just needs a specific example of how to use a tool.
Solution: Through skills like howdoi and the man page explorer, CLAI acts as an interactive assistant. It can pull concise snippets and usage examples directly into the command line interface based on the user's current context.
Example: Instead of leaving the terminal to browse Stack Overflow, a user types clai howdoi unzip a tar.gz file. CLAI immediately displays the specific command tar -xzf file.tar.gz with a brief explanation of the flags used.

Use Case 4: Automated Data Exploration for DevOps

Problem: DevOps engineers often need to quickly parse large log files or CSV data exports to identify trends or anomalies, which usually requires writing custom python scripts or complex awk/sed pipelines.
Solution: Using the dataxplore skill, CLAI can analyze data files directly from the command line. It can summarize distributions, find outliers, or provide statistics about a dataset using simple requests.
Example: An engineer needs to know the most frequent error code in a 1GB log file. They type clai dataxplore "show the top 5 most frequent status codes in access.log". CLAI processes the file and outputs a formatted table showing the counts of 404, 500, and 200 errors.

Use Case 5: Streamlined Cloud Resource Management

Problem: Cloud CLI tools (like ibmcloud or aws) have hundreds of subcommands and parameters, making it difficult for developers to manage infrastructure without constant reference to documentation.
Solution: The ibmcloud skill within CLAI simplifies cloud interactions by providing AI-driven suggestions and command completions that are context-aware, reducing the cognitive load of managing remote infrastructure.
Example: A developer wants to check the health of their Kubernetes clusters but can't remember the exact sub-command. They type clai "check status of my clusters". CLAI identifies the intent and offers to run ibmcloud ks clusters followed by a detailed inspect command for the active cluster.