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  [ ...]' 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:

  • llm, ttok and strip-tags—CLI tools for working with ChatGPT and other LLMs

  • The LLM CLI tool now supports self-hosted language models via plugins

  • LLM now provides tools for working with embeddings

  • Build an image search engine with llm-clip, chat with models with llm chat

  • You can now run prompts against images, audio and video in your terminal using LLM

  • Structured data extraction from unstructured content using LLM schemas

  • Long context support in LLM 0.24 using fragments and template plugins

See also the llm tag on my blog.

Contents#