Ask

Toy project for asking quick questions in the terminal. The problem was that I
occasionally needed to ask a quick question, and I didn't want to open a browser.
It is additionally used for learning purposes.

Quick Start

1. Setup a key on gemini since it's free. https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini/flash/
2. export the key as an environment variable export API_KEY=your_key or setx API_KEY "your_key" on windows
3. Run ask --configure and accept the defaults.
4. Ask a question ask how do i use sudo tee

Usage

$ ask --configure
# Follow the prompts
$ ask what is the capital of France

Installation

Download the release from the tags with your distribution.

wget <link to release.tar.gz>
tar -xvf release.tar.gz
# move the binary to a location that is on the $PATH, like $HOME/.local/bin for user installs
cp ask*/ask $HOME/.local/bin

Windows instructions:

1. Download the windows zip file
2. Extract the file
3. Copy ask.exe into somewhere in your PATH or add the location of this folder to your PATH

Notes: You can set permanent changes to PATH with this cmd setx PATH "%PATH%;%CD%"

From source

Requires cargo to be installed.

git clone
cd ask-rs
cargo build --release 
# Install to bins, this installs to PATH/bin/ask
cargo install --path . --root $HOME/.local

Notes

• This is a toy project, it's not meant to be used in production.
• It does not handle some special characters well, like ?.
• It uses gemini as a default, but you can configure it to use other openai compatible endpoints.

Issues

• Larger binaries due to the vendored openssl I suppose.
• Compilation from source is slow due to the need for openssl in cross compiling.