Annie CLI - Starter Kit

Annie CLI is a terminal-native AI assistant for infrastructure observability. Ask natural language questions, pipe in kubectl output or logs, and get markdown-rendered answers — all from your terminal.

Installation

Interactive Chat

Launch annie with no arguments to enter the interactive TUI — a full-screen terminal chat showing the active project name in the banner, an animated thinking spinner, scrollable viewport, and markdown-rendered responses. Conversation context is maintained across the session, so you can ask follow-up questions naturally. Slash commands autocomplete as you type — start with / and press TAB to accept the suggestion.

Resume a Previous Conversation

Your last conversation ID is automatically saved when you exit. Pick up where you left off:

# Resume the last conversation
annie --resume

# Resume a specific conversation by ID
annie --conversation <id>

When resumed, follow-up questions continue in the same conversation thread — Annie retains the full context from the previous session.

Slash Commands

Keyboard Shortcuts

Input history is persisted across sessions so you can recall previous questions with the Up arrow.

One-Shot Queries

For scripting or quick questions, use annie ask:

# Ask a question directly
annie ask "why is checkout slow?"

# Add context
annie ask "what changed?" --context env=prod --context team=payments

# Verbose mode shows the reasoning chain
annie ask "show me active alerts" --verbose

# JSON output for scripting
annie ask "list services" --output json | jq '.answer'

# Follow-up mode (interactive REPL after initial answer)
annie ask "what's failing?" --follow

# Override project for a single query (name or UUID, does not change default)
annie ask --project "Production - US East" "list s3 buckets"

# Custom timeout (default: 15m)
annie ask "list all ec2 instances" --timeout 20m

# Resume a previous conversation
annie ask --resume "any new alerts since then?"
annie ask --conversation <id> "what about the database?"

Pipe Anything

Annie reads piped stdin automatically — feed it logs, events, or any text for instant analysis:

kubectl get events -A | annie ask "anything unusual?"
kubectl logs -n prod -l app=backend --tail=200 | annie
cat error.log | annie ask "what's the root cause?"

When both stdin and stdout are pipes, Annie falls back to one-shot mode for scripting.

Use from AI Coding Agents

Annie works as a bridge between AI coding agents and your infrastructure. For example, from inside Claude Code:

> Use the annie cli to determine how many ec2 instances are in <Anyshift Project Name>

Claude Code will run annie ask on your behalf, interpret the response, and incorporate the infrastructure context into your development workflow — no context-switching required.

Project Management

Annie inherits the active project from the backend. You can discover and switch projects directly from the terminal:

# List all projects (active project marked with *)
annie project list

# Show current project name and ID
annie project current

# Switch by name (case-insensitive, partial match)
annie project switch "Production - US East"

Authentication

# Browser login (default)
annie auth login

# Check status
annie auth status

# Logout
annie auth logout

Tokens are stored locally in ~/.annie/auth.json with 0600 permissions and auto-refresh when expiring.

Configuration

Annie works out of the box with sensible defaults. All settings can be overridden via ~/.annie/config.yaml or ANNIE_ prefixed environment variables:

annie config set <key> <value>
annie config get <key>
annie config list

Privacy

• Anonymous usage telemetry is on by default and can be disabled with annie config set telemetry false or ANNIE_TELEMETRY=off
• The NO_COLOR environment variable is respected for accessibility

Get Started