ClipAI CLI — Local AI Text Assistant for the Terminal

I built ClipAI CLI — a local AI text assistant that lives entirely in your terminal and runs on Ollama. No API key, no subscription, no data leaving your machine.

The core idea: you should be able to grab text from anywhere — clipboard, file, stdin — pass it through an AI operation, and get the result back without ever leaving the terminal.

Three modes

1. Interactive TUI (default)

Just run clipai with no arguments. You get a menu to pick your input source, choose an operation, see the result, and optionally copy it back to clipboard.

2. Clipboard mode — fastest daily workflow

Copy text in any app (Cmd+C), then:

clipai clip -o validate      # fix grammar → result back to clipboard
clipai clip -o summarize     # summarize   → result back to clipboard
clipai clip -o formal        # rewrite     → result back to clipboard

Then just Cmd+V wherever you want the result. This is the mode I use most — it slots into any app without context switching.

3. Pipe mode — composable shell pipelines

Reads from stdin, writes to stdout. Fully pipeable:

# Fix grammar in a file
cat draft.txt | clipai pipe -o validate > fixed.txt

# Chain operations
cat email.txt | clipai pipe -o shorten | clipai pipe -o formal

# Also copy to clipboard while printing to stdout
cat notes.txt | clipai pipe -o summarize --clipboard

Operations

Name	What it does
validate	Fix grammar, spelling, clarity
summarize	2-3 sentence summary
formal	Rewrite in professional tone
casual	Rewrite in friendly tone
shorten	Shorter, same message
translate	Translate to English

Add your own by editing clipai/ai.py:

OPERATIONS: dict[str, str] = {
    ...
    "mytask": "Your prompt here. Return only the result.",
}

It automatically appears in all three modes — no other changes needed.

macOS right-click Services

There’s also an installer for macOS Services so you can run any operation directly from the right-click context menu in any app:

python install_services.py

Enable the AI: * entries under System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Services → Text.

Install

Requires Ollama running locally with a pulled model:

brew install ollama
ollama pull llama3.2
ollama serve

Then:

pip install clipai-cli

Or clone and run with Poetry:

git clone https://github.com/chanukyapekala/clipai
cd clipai
poetry install
clipai

Source: github.com/chanukyapekala/clipai