cchain 0.2.9

An AI-native modern cli automation tool built with Rust
Documentation

🚀 cchain

Automate like the future depends on it.
Replace brittle shell scripts with AI-powered, retry-aware workflows. Built in Rust for speed and reliability.

⚡ Quick Example

Automate Git commits with AI-generated messages (no more "fix typo" commits!):

cchain run ./cchain_git_commit.json # Using a pre-built workflow to commit changes with AI

JSON Workflow (cchain_git_commit.json):

[
  {
    "command": "git",
    "arguments": ["add", "--all"],
    "retry": 3
  },
  {
    "command": "git",
    "arguments": [
      "commit", "-m", 
      "llm_generate('Summarize these changes in 1 line', 'git diff --staged')"
    ],
    "failure_handling_options": {
      "exit_on_failure": true,
      "remedy_command_line": { "command": "git", "arguments": ["reset"] }
    }
  },
  {
    "command": "git",
    "arguments": ["push"],
    "retry": 2
  }
]

🌟 Why Developers Love cchain

Problem cchain Solution
"Bash scripts break at 3 AM" ✅ Declarative JSON workflows with built-in retries
"Commit messages take forever" ✅ AI-generated inputs via LLMs
"Why does CI/CD fail locally?!" ✅ Identical behavior across local/CI environments
"Makefiles are so 1980" ✅ Simple syntax with concurrency (beta)
"Dependency hell" ✅ Single binary—zero runtime dependencies

🛠️ Features

🔗 Chain Commands Like a Pro

  • Retry failed steps (up to N times, or use -1 to retry indefinitely until succeeded)
  • Pass outputs between commands via environment variables
  • Fix failures automatically: Roll back with remedy_command_line

🤖 AI-Powered Automation

"arguments": ["llm_generate('Summarize this error', 'cat crash.log')"]
  • Integrate LLMs (OpenAI, local models via Ollama, etc.)
  • Generate commit messages, error summaries, test data on the fly

🌐 Cross-Platform Consistency

  • Works on Linux/macOS/Windows out of the box
  • No more if [[ "$OSTYPE" == "linux-gnu"* ]]; then...

⚡ Performance You’ll Notice

  • Built in Rust—starts faster than your shell’s && chain
  • Uses 10x less memory than Python/Ruby scripts

📦 Installation

One-line install (requires Rust):

cargo install cchain

Pre-built binaries (coming soon!)
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🚀 Getting Started

1. Create Your First Workflow

cchain new deploy --prompt "Create a workflow to pull docker image from xxx, then run it in the background"

AI generates a starter cchain_deploy.json!

2. Run It!

cchain run ./cchain_deploy.json

3. Save for Later

cchain add ./cchain_deploy.json  # Bookmark it as workflow #0
cchain run 0  # Re-run anytime

🧩 Advanced Usage

Dynamic Environment Variables

{
  "command": "echo",
  "arguments": ["Building $APP_VERSION"],
  "environment_variables_override": {
    "APP_VERSION": "llm_generate('Generate a semantic version')"
  },
  "stdout_stored_to": "BUILD_ID"  # Pass to next command!
}

Concurrent Tasks (Beta)

{
  "command": "xh download http://example.com/large-asset.zip",
  "concurrency_group": 1  # Download 3 files in parallel
}

You may find examples in the ./examples directory of this repo. Also, you may use the following command to generate a template chain file:

cchain new your_file_name

🔍 Comparison

cchain Bash Just Python
Retry Logic ✅ Built-in ❌ Manual ❌ Manual ❌ Manual
AI Integration ✅ Native ❌ None ❌ None ❌ Add-ons
Cross-Platform ✅ Single Bin ✅ (Fragile) ✅ ✅ (If setup)
Learning Curve Low (JSON) High Medium High

🛠️ Use Cases

CI/CD Made Simple

[
  { "command": "cargo test", "retry": 2 },
  { "command": "llm_generate('Write release notes', 'git log') > CHANGELOG.md" },
  { "command": "docker build -t myapp ." }
]

Developer Onboarding

cchain new setup --prompt "Clone repo, install deps, start services"

AI-Augmented Debugging

{
  "command": "llm_generate('Fix this error', './failing_script.sh 2>&1')",
  "stdout_stored_to": "FIX_SUGGESTION"
}

📚 Documentation

Guides

🤝 Contributing

We welcome PRs!

📜 License

MIT © 2024 Xinyu Bao "Do whatever you want—just don’t make CI pipelines cry."