# Introduction

> What clai is, its CLI commands, supported LLM vendors, and the clai.chat cloud roadmap.

Canonical URL: https://www.clai.chat/docs/v0.1/ · Version: 0.1 · Updated: 2026-10-21

Full site index: https://www.clai.chat/llms.txt

clai is a command-line interface that integrates multi-vendor AI models directly into your terminal workflow. Built as a fast, composable Go binary, `clai` follows unix philosophy: pipe `stdin` into prompts, stream responses to `stdout`, chain tool calls over the Model Context Protocol (MCP), and manage conversations without leaving your shell.

## Core commands

| Command               | Shorthand | Description                                                                                                           |
| --------------------- | --------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `clai query <prompt>` | `q`       | Run a one-shot query with arguments and optional piped `stdin`.                                                       |
| `clai chat`           | `c`       | List, continue (`c continue <id>`), or delete saved conversations, or import transcripts from external coding agents. |
| `clai photo <prompt>` | `p`       | Generate images with configured photo models (`-pm`, `-p-dir`, `-p-prefix`).                                          |
| `clai video <prompt>` | `v`       | Generate videos with configured video models (`-vm`, `-v-dir`, `-v-prefix`).                                          |
| `clai setup`          | `s`       | Interactive TUI wizard for configuring text/photo/video models, profiles, and shell contexts.                         |
| `clai skills`         | `sk`      | List and invoke Agent Skills (`SKILL.md`) from user and repo skill directories.                                       |
| `clai shell_context`  | `sc`      | Inspect and render shell context templates that inject OS, shell, and git metadata.                                   |
| `clai version`        | `v`       | Print the installed `clai` version and build information.                                                             |

## Supported LLM vendors

`clai` supports major cloud and local model providers out of the box:

- **Anthropic** (Claude Opus, Sonnet, Haiku)
- **OpenAI** (GPT and reasoning models)
- **Google** (Gemini models)
- **Mistral**, **DeepSeek**, **XAI** (Grok), and **OpenRouter**
- **Ollama** for local offline models

See [Supported vendors](/docs/reference/vendors/) and [Configuration](/docs/reference/configuration/) for vendor setup details.

## The community hub

`clai.chat` hosts a public hub for the parts of a setup that are worth
copying: profiles, MCP servers, shell contexts, `SKILL.md` skills, themes and
prompts. Anyone reads and downloads a config; a signed-in reader rates it from
one to five stars.

See [Share and rate configs](/docs/guides/community-hub/) and
[Quickstart](/docs/quickstart/) to get started.