ccli-prompt 0.1.1

Cursor's Cmd+K inline prompt, but for your zsh terminal — powered by Claude.

ccli-prompt

Cursor's Cmd+K inline prompt, but for your zsh terminal.

Press Cmd+K at your prompt, type what you want ("kill port 9090", "find files bigger than 100mb", "tar this folder"), hit Enter, and a ready-to-run shell command lands on your command line. Review it, Enter to run it.

Fast because there's no claude CLI boot per call: a tiny Python daemon runs in the background, holds one open HTTPS connection to api.anthropic.com, and reuses the OAuth token you already have from Claude Code (or a plain Anthropic API key). Typical latency: ~500 ms on warm connection + Haiku inference.

Install

pipx install ccli-prompt      # recommended (isolated venv)
# or: pip install ccli-prompt

ccli-prompt install           # runs the interactive wizard (auth + model pick)

The wizard:

1. Authentication — auto-discover from Claude Code credentials, or paste a key (accepts both sk-ant-api03-... and sk-ant-oat01-...).
2. Model — lists live models from /v1/models. Haiku 4.5 is the default.

Requirements: macOS or Linux, zsh 5.x+, Python 3.10+. The daemon has zero dependencies (stdlib only).

Trigger it

Two ways — pick either:

Esc then K — works immediately, no terminal config needed. Press Esc, then K (sequence, not chord).

Cmd+K / Ctrl+K — remap it in your terminal to send ESC+k:

Terminal	How
iTerm2	Settings → Profiles → Keys → + · Shortcut ⌘K · Action Send Escape Sequence · Esc+: k
Terminal.app	Settings → Profiles → Keyboard → + · ⌘ + K · Send Text · Ctrl+V then Esc, then k
Ghostty	keybind = cmd+k=text:\x1bk in ~/.config/ghostty/config
Warp	Settings → Keyboard → bind ⌘K → Send Text · \x1bk
Alacritty	[[keyboard.bindings]] with key = "K", mods = "Control", chars = "\u001bk"
Kitty	map ctrl+k send_text all \x1bk in ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf
WezTerm	{key="k", mods="CTRL", action=wezterm.action.SendString("\x1bk")}

How it works

• ccli-prompt install — copies a zsh widget to ~/.ccli-prompt/ccli.zsh, appends a source line to your ~/.zshrc, and runs the wizard.
• The widget (bound to ^[k — what Esc+K and remapped Cmd+K send) reads your query via read-from-minibuffer, sends it over a Unix socket to the daemon, and places the response into $BUFFER so nothing runs until you press Enter.
• The daemon (python3 -m ccli_prompt.daemon, auto-spawned on first use) reads auth from: env var → ~/.ccli-prompt/config → macOS Keychain → ~/.claude/.credentials.json. It opens one HTTPSConnection to api.anthropic.com and keeps it warm, POSTs to /v1/messages (Bearer+OAuth-beta or x-api-key depending on token prefix), caches the system prompt, and exits after 30 minutes of idleness.

Configuration

Environment variables (override the config file; set in ~/.zshrc before the source line):

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="sk-ant-..."       # API key or OAuth token
export CCLI_MODEL="claude-haiku-4-5"
export CCLI_MAX_TOKENS=400
export CCLI_IDLE_TIMEOUT=1800
export CCLI_SYSTEM_PROMPT_FILE="$HOME/.ccli-prompt/prompt.md"

Re-run the wizard at any time: ccli-prompt configure.

Edit the system prompt at ~/.ccli-prompt/prompt.md (copied from the package on install).

Manual daemon control

# status
[[ -S /tmp/ccli-$USER.sock ]] && echo "running" || echo "not running"

# stop
pkill -f ccli_prompt.daemon; rm -f /tmp/ccli-$USER.sock

# start manually (normally auto-starts on first Cmd+K)
python3 -m ccli_prompt.daemon &

Safety

• Daemon's Unix socket is 0600, scoped to your user.
• Responses only land in $BUFFER — nothing executes until you press Enter.
• The default system prompt refuses destructive commands (rm -rf /, dd, disk formatting, force-push to main, etc.) unless you request them in those exact terms.

Uninstall

ccli-prompt uninstall
pipx uninstall ccli-prompt   # or: pip uninstall ccli-prompt

License

MIT