Over the last two weeks, I’ve been working on a side project called Askimo — a command-line AI assistant that I’ve released under the MIT license.
It started from a simple need: I use AI a lot in my daily work — OpenAI, Claude, Ollama, Copilot. Many of the tasks are small and repetitive, like:
Generating release notes from commits
Summarizing logs
Updating a GitHub email owner etc
I wanted a tool that could:
Switch between providers quickly
Automate repetitive tasks in a creative way
Be customized for my workflow
Why build another CLI AI tool?
There are already some great tools out there. But I decided to build my own for a few reasons:
Learning → I wanted to explore GraalVM for cross-platform native images and get hands-on with LangChain4j to experiment with system messages, tokens, memory, and prompt tuning.
Control → Having my own tool means I can set the pace, customize features for my workflow, and extend it however I want.
Openness → Askimo is MIT licensed, with a pluggable design that makes it easy to support both closed APIs and open-source models like Ollama.
What Askimo can do today
Streaming chat in the terminal (interactive REPL)
Pipe execution: cat logs.txt | askimo "summarize this"
Multiple AI providers: currently OpenAI and Ollama, with a pluggable design to add more (e.g., Gemini)
Simple web chat page for those who prefer not to use the terminal (though CLI is where automation really shines)
What’s next?
Askimo is still very early. I’m exploring:
Adding more providers (both open-source and hosted APIs)
Custom function for repetitive tasks (e.g., release notes, log analysis, ticket triage)
Extending the plugin system so the community can add their own commands and providers
Contributions welcome 🙌
I built Askimo mainly for myself, but I’d love to see how others use it. Every contribution helps — whether it’s opening issues, suggesting features, or sending a PR.
Repo: https://github.com/haiphucnguyen/askimo
If you’re interested in AI at the terminal, or just want to tinker with GraalVM and LangChain4j, give it a try. And if you like the idea, a ⭐️ would mean a lot.
Top comments (1)
Curious what kind of repetitive tasks you’d want an AI CLI tool to handle?