Aether CLI

aethercli is a small Go CLI for AetherAPI text models. It stores your AetherAPI key once, lets you choose a default model, and then sends prompts from your terminal.

Install

From GitHub Releases:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Aculnaj/aethercli/main/install.sh | sh

The installer places aethercli in ~/.local/bin by default. Override with:

AETHER_INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/bin sh install.sh

From source:

go install github.com/Aculnaj/aethercli/cmd/aethercli@latest

First Run

Run setup once:

aethercli setup

The CLI asks for:

• your AetherAPI key, which must start with sk-aetherapi-
• your default text model, for example claude-sonnet-4-6

The key is stored in the OS Keychain under service aether and account api-key. Non-secret config is stored in your user config directory at aether/config.json.

You can also use an environment variable instead of the keychain:

export AETHER_API_KEY=sk-aetherapi-...

AETHER_API_KEY takes precedence over the stored key.

Usage

Ask with an explicit model:

aethercli ask "Write a short haiku about terminals" --model claude-sonnet-4-6

Ask with your saved default model:

aethercli ask "Explain DNS in one paragraph"

Pipe a longer prompt:

cat prompt.txt | aethercli ask --model gpt-4o

Add project context from files or directories:

aethercli ask "Review this implementation" --file internal/api/api.go
aethercli ask "Find risks in this project" --context .

Directory context skips common build folders and honors simple .gitignore patterns.

Start interactive mode:

aethercli

Start the Bubble Tea chat TUI:

aethercli chat
aethercli tui

Inside the TUI, type /help for commands such as /models, /sessions, /resume <id>, /new, /clear, and /quit.

Send or resume a saved chat session without opening the TUI:

aethercli chat "Help me debug this failing test"
aethercli chat --resume "Continue with a smaller fix"
aethercli sessions list
aethercli sessions show 20260612-103000

Stream output live:

aethercli ask "Draft a release note" --stream

Print JSON:

aethercli ask "Summarize this in one sentence" --json

Preview estimated tokens and cost before sending a request:

aethercli ask "Explain this diff" --estimate --max-tokens 1000

List text/chat models:

aethercli models
aethercli models --json

Update the CLI when a new GitHub release is available:

aethercli update

Release builds also check for updates automatically at most once per day and print a hint when a newer version exists.

Manage config:

aethercli config get
aethercli config set default-model claude-sonnet-4-6
aethercli config get default-model
aethercli config clear key
aethercli config clear

Development

Run tests:

go test ./...

Build locally:

go build ./cmd/aethercli

Create release artifacts locally if GoReleaser is installed:

goreleaser release --snapshot --clean