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What is AI Shell?

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AI Shell is an interactive shell that provides a chat interface with language models. The shell provides agents that connect to different AI models and other assistance providers. Users can interact with the agents in a conversational manner.

The AI Shell project includes:

  • The command-line shell (aish) interface
  • A framework for creating AI agents and other assistance providers
  • Integration with Windows Terminal and iTerm2 on macOS
  • A PowerShell module for tight integration with PowerShell. For more information, see the AI Shell module.

Each AI assistant is known as an agent. The initial release of AI Shell includes two agents:

  • Azure OpenAI agent that connects to an instance of gpt-4o. Use this agent for general AI tasks.
  • Copilot in Azure agent that can assist with Microsoft Azure knowledge. Use the Azure agent for assistance with Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell commands.

You can run the AI Shell executable (aish.exe) in a standalone experience or you can use the AIShell PowerShell module with PowerShell 7 to create a split-screen experience with Windows Terminal. This is the recommended way to use AI Shell because you get deeper integration with the shell. These features include:

  • The ability to insert code from the AI Shell response directly into the connect command shell
  • Multi-step commands are added to the Predictive IntelliSense buffer for quick acceptance
  • Simple, single-command error recovery

Project Status

AI Shell is currently in Public Preview. This means that the tool is available for testing, but it's not feature-complete. Please note that some elements of the tool are still under development and are subject to change. Your feedback is important to us during this development phase. We encourage you to share your experiences to help us improve AI Shell.

Known Issues

This current release of AI Shell has some known issues that we're actively working on addressing:

  • The AI Shell module isn't supported on Linux.
  • The split-screen experience work best with Windows Terminal. There is limited support for the split-screen experience on macOS with iTerm2. The aish executable can be run on Linux, but the split-screen experience is not available.
  • If you have multiple versions of Windows Terminal installed, the Start-AIShell command opens a new terminal window running a different version of Windows Terminal.
  • If you started Window Terminal as an administrator, the Start-AIShell command opens a new terminal window running Windows Terminal without elevation.
  • If you are using the default Mac Terminal, the colors may not render correctly and may be difficult to read the code generated.

If you encounter any other issues, please report them to our GitHub repository.

Providing Feedback

We welcome your feedback to help improve AI Shell! Here are ways you can get involved:

  • File Issues: If you encounter bugs, have suggestions for new features, or would like to report inconsistencies, please open an issue on the AI Shell GitHub repository.
  • Join the discussions: Join our community discussions on the on the GitHub discussions tab. Share ideas, discuss potential improvements, and connect with other users. This is also where we encourage you to share any agents you may create.
  • Documentation: If you notice any documentation gaps, please suggest changes or submit PRs to improve our documentation.

We aren't accepting pull requests for code changes at this time, but we value your feedback and documentation contributions.