Linux_post_install/DOC/howto/ai.md

How-To: pos ai

Chat with AI models — Gemini, OpenRouter, and more — from the terminal and through the Telegram bot. Tool: pos ai with pluggable provider adapters (gemini, openrouter).

Command	What it does
pos ai ask "<prompt>"	Answer to stdout (scriptable; terse by default, --full for long form). Runs inside the persistent default session — it remembers prior turns across invocations
pos ai --provider openrouter ask "<prompt>"	Same, but uses OpenRouter instead of the default Gemini provider
pos ai ask --last "why did that fail?"	Same, but also appends the output of the most recent logged pos command or captured output so the model can diagnose a real failure (stderr notes which source + staleness warning)
pos ai capture <cmd>	Run any command, capture its output for --last, and show it on screen
pos ai ask --session <name> "…"	Same, but uses a named session instead of default
pos ai chat	Interactive multi-turn conversation (session default unless --session)
pos ai models	List available model ids for the active provider
pos ai providers	List all available providers and their config status
pos ai sessions	List persistent sessions / clear one (reset <name>, e.g. reset default)

Shared flags: --provider <name> selects the backend (gemini|openrouter; default: gemini; also settable via AI_PROVIDER env/config); --model <id> overrides the model; --system "<text>" sets the system instruction for every turn (kept out of the session file) — it replaces the built-in terse ask prompt wholesale; --full skips that built-in prompt for long-form answers; --last attaches the latest pos command output or captured output (tail, max 4096 chars) to the question and notes on stderr which source was attached, its age, and a staleness warning once it is older than an hour (ask only; stdout stays pure answer). Use capture to save output from any command for --last.

Backward compatibility: pos ai gemini and pos ai openrouter still work as shorthand for pos ai --provider gemini and pos ai --provider openrouter.

Every ask/chat lands in a persistent session file under ~/.local/share/linux_post_install/ai/<name>.json (capped at 40 turns). Terminal work accumulates in default; clear it with pos ai sessions reset default.

---

Terse by default, rendered on screen

ask prepends a built-in system instruction telling the model to work like a CLI assistant: lead with the exact commands, one-line explanations, no essays — and when the message is a "how do I install/update/solve/edit X" question or pastes an error/command output, diagnose it and lead with the fix command(s). That prompt ends with one machine-context line (hostname, distro, kernel and architecture detected on this box), so answers match the actual machine; --system "<text>" swaps it wholesale; --full drops it for long-form output. chat keeps its neutral behavior (only --system applies).

On a terminal, answers are rendered as markdown, separated from your prompt line by one blank line: fenced code blocks stay monospace (indented + dimmed), inline `code` turns yellow, **bold** turns bold, headers become bold cyan, --- becomes a thin rule. If glow is installed it is used automatically; otherwise a small built-in renderer kicks in — no extra dependency either way. When stdout is not a tty (pipes, scripts, cron, the Telegram/Matrix bridges) the raw markdown bytes are printed exactly as before (no added blank lines), so scripting stays byte-stable.

---

First run — get a key, configure, chat

1. Get a free API key from https://aistudio.google.com/apikey (requires a Google account).

2. Configure it (masked input):

   pos config ai          # enter AI_API_KEY (or AI_GEMINI_API_KEY)
   

3. Test:

   pos ai ask "Explain DNS in one line"
   pos ai models                 # verify the default model id is live
   pos ai chat                   # multi-turn conversation
   

ai.env lives at ~/.config/linux_post_install/ai.env (chmod 600); pos config ai is the only place the key is written. The key is never printed by pos.

OpenRouter — many providers, one key

OpenRouter gives access to hundreds of models from different providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, Mistral, Google, …) through a single OpenAI-compatible API. Use --provider openrouter to switch:

pos ai --provider openrouter ask "hi"
# or the legacy shorthand:
pos ai openrouter ask "hi"

Configure the API key:

pos config ai              # enter AI_API_KEY (or OPENROUTER_API_KEY)

The default model is openrouter/auto (OpenRouter picks the best available provider automatically). Override with --model provider/model-name:

pos ai --provider openrouter ask --model anthropic/claude-sonnet-4 "explain DNS"

All features work the same way across providers — --last for diagnosing failures, --system for custom instructions, --full for long-form answers, persistent sessions, tty markdown rendering, and machine context. Sessions are shared in ~/.local/share/linux_post_install/ai/ (universal messages format).

Switch providers per-invocation:

pos ai ask "hello"                    # uses gemini (default)
pos ai --provider openrouter ask "hello"  # uses openrouter

Or set the default via config:

pos config ai              # set AI_PROVIDER=openrouter

Provider architecture

pos ai uses a pluggable provider system. Each provider is a thin adapter in lib/ai-providers/<name>.sh that handles the API-specific logic (auth, request format, response parsing). The main tool handles sessions, rendering, machine context, and all shared logic.

Available providers:

Provider	API	Default model	Config key
gemini	Google Gemini REST API	gemini-2.5-flash	AI_GEMINI_API_KEY
openrouter	OpenRouter (OpenAI-compatible)	openrouter/auto	OPENROUTER_API_KEY

Adding a new provider: create lib/ai-providers/<name>.sh implementing provider_name(), provider_default_model(), provider_generate(), and provider_models_list(). See the existing adapters for the interface contract.

From the Telegram bot

Once pos ai ask works, any non-command message starting with ai is answered by the model — no bot map entry needed:

you:    ai what is Nvidia
bot:    NVIDIA is a company best known for GPUs...

The trigger word is configurable via pos communication telegram listener prefix <word> (or pos config telegram → TELEGRAM_AI_PREFIX); it takes effect immediately, so with prefix bot you'd message bot what is Nvidia. pos communication telegram listener prefix shows the current value.

The bridge lives in the Telegram listener's handle_message (it calls pos ai ask); only the owner chat is served, so your key stays private. Set a different model per message:

you:    ai --model gemini-2.5-flash explain a Raft consensus log

Telegram memory & formatting

Each chat has its own persistent session (telegram-<chat id> — independent of your terminal's default session), so the model remembers the conversation; <prefix> /reset clears it (with the default prefix that's ai /reset). The listener passes a system prompt telling the model it is answering in a Telegram chat — so it uses emojis and stays lively — and strips markdown (**x**, backticks, #, links…) from the reply before sending it, since messages go out as plain text.

Replying to a message before <prefix> … makes that message part of the prompt, so the model can answer about it:

you:    /status                    → bot: (system health output…)
you:    ai check this details about my linux   ← reply to the /status message

Recipes

• Diagnose the last failed pos run: pos ai ask --last "why did that fail?" — every non-interactive pos <cmd> logs its output to ~/.local/share/linux_post_install/logs/; --last attaches the newest one (tail, max 4096 chars, errors at the bottom kept) and says on stderr which log it grabbed (name, age, first line). Older than an hour? You get a [!] staleness warning — the newest log may predate your current problem, so pipe the fresh failure in instead
• Pipe arbitrary output in: failing-cmd 2>&1 | pos ai ask how do I fix this
• Answer from a file: pos ai ask "$(cat notes.txt)"
• Answer in a cron job: pos ai ask "summarize today's git log" > /tmp/ai_digest.txt
• Long-form on demand: pos ai ask --full "compare ext4 and zfs in depth"
• Forget what the terminal asked: pos ai sessions reset default
• Switch to OpenRouter: pos ai --provider openrouter ask "hi"
• Change the default model:

  pos config ai              # set AI_MODEL, or:
  AI_MODEL=gemini-2.5-flash pos ai ask "hi"
  

• List available providers: pos ai providers

Capturing any command's output for --last

By default, --last reads from pos dispatcher logs (only pos commands). To analyze output from any command (pip install, apt upgrade, make, etc.):

Option A — explicit capture:

pos ai capture pip install xyz
pos ai ask --last "what happened"

The capture subcommand runs the command, shows its output on screen, and saves it for --last. Each capture overwrites the previous one (latest only).

Option B — automatic capture (shell hook):

# Add to ~/.bashrc:
source /usr/local/bin/pos-ai-hook.sh

After sourcing, every command's output is silently captured. Then just run any command and --last picks it up automatically. Captures up to 1 MB (oldest truncated). To disable: unset __POS_CAPTURE_ACTIVE.

How it works

• ask sends the session history (OpenAI messages format) to the active provider's API. Gemini converts to contents format internally; OpenRouter sends messages directly. The answer text is printed to stdout.
• Sessions live as one JSON file per name under ~/.local/share/linux_post_install/ai/ (default.json unless --session); each turn is appended and the file is pruned to the last 40 turns. Old Gemini-format sessions (contents[]) are auto-migrated to messages format on load.
• chat keeps the whole conversation in memory as a growing messages[] array (seeded from the session file), so later turns have earlier context. /reset drops it (and empties the session file).
• On a non-2xx response the API's error.message is shown and the exit code is non-zero — so scripts can rely on ask failing loudly.

Troubleshooting

• ask errors "No Gemini API key — run 'pos config ai'" → the key isn't set (or ai.env isn't readable). Run pos config ai.
• API error 400 → the model id is wrong or the prompt is too long for the model's context window; check pos ai models.
• API error 429 → rate limit (free tier); wait and retry, or use a different model.
• Nothing in Telegram for <prefix> … (default ai) → the listener daemon must be running (pos communication telegram listener --status); the bot token and owner chat id must match pos config telegram. Check the current trigger word with pos communication telegram listener prefix.

---

Related

• Reference: DOC/POS.md → ai
• Telegram bridge context: communication.md