Queries and unix pipes

clai query (shorthand q) is designed for unix pipelines: it accepts stdin, substitutes placeholders, and writes streamed responses to stdout.

Piping stdin

When you pipe data into clai q, stdin is prepended to your prompt by default:

cat build.log | clai q "Which compiler error caused the build to fail?"

Replacing placeholders with -i and -I

Use -i (-replace) to replace every occurrence of {} in your prompt with stdin:

git diff --staged | clai -i q "Write a conventional commit message for: {}"

If your prompt already contains {}, specify a custom replacement token with -I (-replace-string):

cat schema.sql | clai -I "SCHEMA" q "Generate Go structs for SCHEMA"

Raw output for scripts and cron

By default, terminal output is formatted for readability. When piping clai into another program, file, or CI job, pass -re (-raw) to emit raw unformatted text:

clai -re q "Output only a valid JSON array of three HTTP status codes" | jq .

See CLI for all query flags.