Crate cliai 

cliai is a small Rust library for invoking AI tools through local CLI backends.

It exposes a minimal trait-based interface so applications can work with different AI backends without coupling to a provider SDK or HTTP client.

Included backends

• Ollama for local models via the ollama CLI
• Copilot for GitHub Copilot CLI via the copilot binary

Design

This crate shells out to installed executables. That keeps the dependency surface small, but it also means:

• the backend binary must be installed and available on PATH, unless overridden with with_bin()
• prompts are passed to external processes
• runtime behavior depends on the installed CLI tool

Example

use cliai::{AiBackend, GenerateRequest, Ollama};

fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let ai = Ollama::new("llama3.2");
    let response = ai.generate(
        &GenerateRequest::new("Write a haiku about Rust.")
            .with_instructions("Be concise."),
    )?;

    println!("{}", response.text);
    Ok(())
}

Re-exports

pub use backend::Copilot;

pub use backend::Ollama;

pub use request::GenerateRequest;

pub use response::GenerateResponse;

Modules

backend

Backend implementations for invoking AI tools.

request

response

Enums

AiError

Error returned by AI backends.

Traits

AiBackend

Common interface implemented by supported AI backends.