rtdm

read the damn manual.

An AI shell helper that gives you the command without the commentary.

$ rtdm find files over 100mb
find . -size +100M

Install

pipx install rtdm
rtdm config init

rtdm config init walks you through a one-time setup. Pick local for free, self-hosted use, or remote if you have an API key from rtdm.sh.

Usage

Three modes

rtdm <query>           # get a shell command
rtdm -q <question>     # ask a general terminal question
rtdm -e <command>      # explain a command

Multi-word queries don't need quotes — words after the flags are joined with spaces:

rtdm find files over 100mb     # works
rtdm "find files over 100mb"   # also works

The exception is when your input contains characters the shell would interpret — globs (*, ?, []), control operators (;, |, &, <, >), or arguments that look like flags (e.g. --recursive). Quote those:

rtdm -e "find . -mtime -7 -exec rm {} \;"

Plain dashes are fine; rtdm find files -size 100mb works without quoting.

Flags

Subcommands

Account self-service for hosted-mode users. All require remote mode (except whoami, which works in either mode).

Examples

$ rtdm extract a tar.gz file
tar -xzf archive.tar.gz

$ rtdm -q what does grep -E do
grep -E enables extended regular expressions, allowing operators like
+, ?, |, (), and {} without backslash escaping.

$ rtdm -e "find . -mtime -7 -exec rm {} \;"
This finds every file under the current directory modified in the last
7 days and deletes each one. -mtime -7 selects "less than 7 days ago";
-exec rm {} \; runs rm on each match.

$ rtdm -c list all my docker containers
docker ps -a
(copied to clipboard)

Local mode (free, self-hosted)

Run your own Ollama, point rtdm at it. No API key needed, no network call to anything but your own machine. Free forever.

See LOCAL.md for setup.

Hosted mode ($3/month)

We run rtdm at rtdm.sh on dedicated GPU hardware. No setup, no Ollama install, no model downloads — just one HTTP call per query. 500 queries per month, cancel anytime.

Sign up at rtdm.sh.

Privacy

We don't log your queries on our servers. We don't train models on them. We don't sell anything to anyone.

We do use Cloudflare in front for DDoS protection, which means Cloudflare technically sees TLS-decrypted requests as they pass through. Most modern services work this way and we think the protection is worth it, but we know some of you will disagree. See rtdm.sh for the full note.

If you want zero third parties in the path, use local mode.

Configuration

The config file lives at ~/.config/rtdm/config.toml (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/rtdm/config.toml):

mode = "remote"  # or "local"

[remote]
api_key = "rtdm_live_..."
endpoint = "https://rtdm.sh"

[local]
ollama_url = "http://localhost:11434"
model = "qwen2.5-coder:7b-instruct-q4_K_M"

Useful subcommands:

rtdm config init     # interactive setup
rtdm config show     # print effective configuration
rtdm config path     # print the config file location

Development

git clone https://github.com/t3t5u0403/rtdm-cli
cd rtdm-cli
uv sync --extra dev
uv run pytest

License

MIT. See LICENSE.