please: Ask your computer nicely

please is a command-line tool that accepts natural language input, then uses an LLM to generate + run a Bash script.

Installation

pip install git+https://github.com/aniiyengar/please.git

Usage

| NOTE: You need to pass your OpenAI API key in your environment as OPENAI_API_KEY.

Type your prompt in natural language starting with the word "please".

$ please <prompt>

For example:

$ please create a standard gitignore for a python package in the current directory

echo "# Byte-compiled / optimized / DLL files" >> .gitignore
echo "__pycache__/" >> .gitignore
echo "*.py[cod]" >> .gitignore
echo "*$py.class" >> .gitignore
echo "*.so" >> .gitignore
echo "*.egg-info/" >> .gitignore
echo "dist/" >> .gitignore
echo "build/" >> .gitignore
echo "pip-wheel-metadata/" >> .gitignore
echo "*.egg" >> .gitignore
echo "*.egg-info" >> .gitignore
echo ".eggs/" >> .gitignore


Creating a .gitignore file and adding rules to ignore various types of files and directories.

Features

• If a script fails, please pipes stderr back into the LLM to create a revised script. This is especially useful when a file or dependency doesn't exist, etc.

• If the prompt isn't specific enough, please prompts the user for extra information, which gets inserted into the script before it's run.

• please will print the command(s) being executed, and summarizes the command(s) of the script in natural language after execution.

Demo

Some capabilities are shown in this Twitter thread.

Roadmap

I'm open-sourcing this in the interest of collaboration and openness, but I don't plan on maintaining it a lot. There are a few improvements that can be made though:

• Better prompts
• Run an LLM locally instead of relying on OpenAI
• Caution the user before making destructive actions