AI in the Command Prompt (Windows): A Practical Experiment

#ai #productivity #terminal #windows

This started from curiosity.
I've been reading about AI in the command line for a while. Eventually, the question stopped being "is this useful?" and became much simpler: why not try it myself?

So I did.

This post documents putting AI into the Windows command prompt, seeing how it behaves at that level, and understanding what it can and can't do.
What this experiment is trying to do
AI has a bad reputation right now. It's marketed as a magic pill, a replacement for people, or a shortcut to everything. That framing creates fear, skepticism, and unrealistic expectations.
This experiment isn't about any of that.
AI here is treated as a tool. Nothing more.

The goal is to understand AI at a very basic layer by removing abstraction. Putting AI in the command prompt does exactly that.

Why the command prompt

The command prompt sits at a basic system level. It's simple, direct, and familiar. Even people who don't use it often still know it exists.
If AI can exist there, then it can exist almost anywhere.
This isn't about romanticizing terminals. It's about testing what happens when newer technology is attached to an old, honest interface.

What I tried after it worked

Once the AI command existed, I tried using it for things that normally cause friction:

Explaining error messages without copying them into a browser
Summarizing noisy command output
Sanity-checking destructive commands before running them
Drafting small scripts when I didn't feel like writing from scratch

AI didn't run anything for me. It didn't decide anything. It just helped reduce context switching and mental load.

What this actually solved

This solved a basic problem: context switching.
Instead of copying output, opening a browser, pasting text, reading, then returning to the prompt, everything stayed in one place. That reduction in context switching alone was worthwhile.
Solving a basic problem is enough. Once a basic issue is solved, more complex use cases can branch out.