Module cli_provider 

Generic subprocess-based LLM provider.

Covers Claude Desktop / Claude CLI, Gemini CLI, Cursor Agent, and OpenCode — the four “subscription CLIs” a developer commonly has logged in on a workstation. Each has its own argv shape but they all share the same execution contract:

• spawn the binary with a fixed flag set + the prompt as argv;
• stdin is closed (these tools read their prompt from -p);
• exit 0 + non-empty stdout = success;
• anything else = LlmError::Provider with stderr text.

Why a single generic provider

caloron-noether already implements this multi-provider fallback in Python (stages/phases/_llm.py) and learned the hard edge cases — the 25-second timeout cap to stay under Nix’s default 30-second kill, the SKIP_CLI escape hatch for sandboxed environments where CLI auth isn’t mounted, the exact argv incantation per tool. This module ports those lessons into the Rust engine so noether-grid workers get the same behaviour, for free, with the same failure modes. See docs/research/llm-here.md for the long-term plan to unify all three implementations behind one shared tool.

Sandbox handling

When NOETHER_LLM_SKIP_CLI=1 is set, every CLI provider refuses to advertise itself as available (available() == false). Intended for stages that run inside the Nix executor, which mounts a restricted $HOME that doesn’t carry the operator’s CLI auth state — without this gate, a subscription CLI stalls waiting for interactive login and gets SIGKILL’d by the runner.

Timeout

Default timeout_secs = 25. Deliberately under Nix’s 30-second default stage kill so a stalled CLI reports Provider(timeout) instead of the stage runner’s less useful “process killed” error. Callers outside the Nix executor can bump it up via CliConfig::timeout_secs.

Modules

specs

Concrete per-CLI specs. Argv shapes are identical to what caloron’s _llm.py uses — keep in sync when either side changes.

Structs

CliConfig

Tunables for one CliProvider instance.

CliProvider

LLM provider that delegates each completion to a subscription CLI. Stateless — each call spawns a fresh subprocess.

CliSpec

A static description of one CLI tool: the binary name, the argv template, and how system prompts are passed (if at all). Used by CliProvider::new to pick a concrete tool.

Enums

PromptStyle

Functions

cli_providers_suppressed

Check whether CLI providers are globally suppressed. Set NOETHER_LLM_SKIP_CLI=1 inside a sandboxed environment (the Nix executor being the obvious one) where subscription CLIs would stall waiting for auth state that isn’t mounted.

new_claude_cli

Convenience constructor preserved for the call-site in providers.rs.

Type Aliases

ClaudeCliProviderDeprecated

Old name kept so existing call-sites still compile.