Uh-Halp is an AI-Powered Command-Line Helper for Linux

Uh Halp is a cutting-edge AI command-line tool powered by OpenAI’s most affordable model, enhancing your command-line experience like never before.

If you’re a loyal reader (if not, bookmark us now), you probably already know about chatGPT shell cli. It’s identical to this, with the only difference being that uh-halp serves as a command-line helper, whereas chatGPT-shell-cli provides the full ChatGPT prompt right in your terminal.

So, you can say it’s a lightweight variant of the chatGPT-shell-cli that follows the identical procedure for installation and command-line usage.

Tutorial Details

A Note for Readers

Please be aware that this command-line tool relies entirely on the OpenAI generative AI model, requiring an OpenAI premium membership and API keys, as free account keys are not workable.

The accuracy of the generated command relies entirely on the model’s accuracy, so if the OpenAI model is enhanced or a more advanced one is used, accuracy can be enhanced as well.

In the end, I would only say that this tool is not for beginners. You should definitely have some experience with command-line usage; otherwise, you might break your Linux system.

How to Install Uh-Halp on Linux

The installation process is straightforward and identical to the chatGPT shell cli. As of now, the developer suggests installing it via pip, which requires having Python and Pip installed on your Linux system.

I believe choosing Python for building this tool was the right decision. Spending time packaging it for multiple distributions, especially during the early stages of the project, would have been a waste of time.

Once you are ready, launch your terminal and issue the following command to begin the installation:

$ pip install uh-halp

Once the installation is complete, visit the official OpenAI site to generate an API key for this tool. Note that you should perform this step only on the recurring OpenAI account.

After running the next command, you’ll be prompted to input your OpenAI API key, so make sure to provide the one you’ve generated.

$ uh

Output:

After the installation is complete, you are all set to use it.

Usage of Uh-Halp

The usage is quite simple and straight-forward; you just have to type the “uh” command and specify the query, and it will generate a command for your query using the OpenAI model.

I have performed the following examples:

1. The following is an example of asking for the list of all directories created yesterday using the find command.

$ uh how to find a directory created yesterday using the find command
find /path/to/search -type d -ctime 1

2. The following is an example of asking to list all partitions in Linux.

$ uh how to list all partitions
sudo fdisk -l

3. The following is an example of an asking command to check free space.

$ uh how much space have I got free here?
df -h .

4. The following is an example of connecting to a remote system via the public key using the ssh command.

$ uh how to connect to a remote system via public key using the ssh command
ssh -i /path/to/private_key user@remote_host

5. The following is an example of checking if the internet is up.

$ uh check if the internet is up
ping -c 3 google.com

That’s the last example. Now, note that in the first example, finding the directories created yesterday using the find command will not work.

So directly executing it will not make sense as the generated command is incorrect (to know the correct answer, check out our article), and it’s not the fault of the developer or OpenAI.

It’s simply a model hallucination that you will encounter a lot of time while working with generative AI models.

At this time, it was the basic find command that did not perform any modifications on your Linux system, but for other commands like fsck, wget, curl, usermod, etc. Execute them only if you know what you are doing.

Final Word

At present, this tool is rather basic, but the developer has expressed interest in adding history-capturing features in the future. If these features or any others are added, I will update this article accordingly.

So, if you have any questions or queries related to the article, feel free to tell us in the comment section.

Till then, peace