fastask

FastAsk

Fastask.ai

FastAsk is a the fastest way to get answers in the command line.

By default, requests are routed through a freely hosted LLM endpoint so users can start asking right away.

However, its very easy to clone this and run whatever LLM you want, we have prebuilt examples for you to use your own Groq, Togetherai or OpenAI key!

Installation

FastAsk can be installed using pip:

pip install fastask

Usage

FastAsk can be used directly from the command line:

>>> ask list items in dir by date
1. 'ls -lt' - List newer first
2. 'ls -ltr' - List older first

More examples:

>>> ask find ip address
1. 'ipconfig getifaddr en0' - Get IP for en0
2. 'ifconfig | grep 'inet '' - List all IPs
3. 'curl ifconfig.me' - Get public IP

>>> ask "convert video to audio using ffmpeg"
1. 'ffmpeg -i video.mp4 audio.mp3' - Convert to MP3
2. 'ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -vn audio.ogg' - Convert to OGG
3. 'ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -q:a 0 audio.wav' - Convert to WAV

Running Commands

>>> ask <number>

you can run the commands it outputs like so:

>>> ask how to ping google
1. 'ping google.com' - Default ping Google.

>>> ask 1
PING google.com (142.251.41.78): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 142.251.41.78: icmp_seq=0 ttl=112 time=7.765 ms
...

History

FastAsk stores the past 5 commands you asked, and the responses so you can refer to previous commands and outputs easily.

Example:

>>> ask how to find installed packages
1. 'brew list' - List on macOS with Homebrew.

and then a second query can be like:

>>> ask in python
1. 'pip list' - List for pip packages.
2. 'conda list' - List for conda envs.

you can also re-print the last output fastask gave with:

>>> ask history
1. 'pip list' - List for pip packages.
2. 'conda list' - List for conda envs.

If something weird is occuring/having weird errors, try clearing your history.

>>> ask --clear
FastAsk History Cleared.

Notes

if you come across something that looks like this

>>> ask what is rebase?
zsh: no matches found: rebase?

its because of how args are parsed in the actual zsh/bash itself. If you want to put a question mark or any other of: -,./;'][-= you have to wrap your question in qoutes like:

>>> ask "what is rebase?"

Developing Locally

To make edits to fastask:

• Clone this repo

git clone https://github.com/sincethestudy/fastask.git

• Go to the root folder

cd fastask

• pip install it in that directory with "editable" mode on on so that any changes you make automatically update the package on your system without having to install every time.

Make sure to uninstall fastask before you do this if you've already installed it before.

(if needed) pip uninstall fastask

pip install -e .

Now you can edit the source code and still use the ask CLI command anywhere in your system on your own custom version of fastask.

Using a different LLM

We really want users to mess around and see how they can improve FastAsk.

There is a llm.py file which is essentially a playground file for you to write your own endpoint function. For example, adding an OLLAMA_client would be a good next step.

To use the free FastAsk API server (default):

>>>ask --llm=fastask

To use your self-hosted FastAsk API server:

>>>ask --llm=fastask-local

Note: This requires you to have the FastAsk API running locally on port 8080.

To use another LLM such as Groq:

>>>ask --llm=groq

Note: This requires you to provide API keys through environment variables. See .env.example. You can set them in .env, or through your shell startup script (~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, etc).

License

FastAsk is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more details.