idk

Turn plain-English questions into a single, ready-to-run shell command with a short explanation. idk streams the suggestion, detects your OS/shell and common tools, and (optionally) asks if you want to execute the command.

• Powered by OpenRouter chat completions
• Detects parent shell automatically (Windows/macOS/Linux)
• Tailors suggestions to commands available on your system
• One command per answer, plus a concise explanation

Install

There are prebuilt, stable releases available here. Alternatively you can also build idk from source.

You can bootstrap idk with a single command. This script will detect your OS and CPU (amd64/arm64), download the correct binary and install it to /usr/local/bin/idk.

curl -sL https://src.w2k.sh/idk/install.sh | sh

Configure

On first run, idk creates a config at ~/.idk.yml with defaults and exits so you can add your API key.

openrouter:
  api_key: your-api-key
  model: openai/gpt-5-chat
commands:
  ask_to_run: true

• openrouter.api_key: your OpenRouter API key
• openrouter.model: model slug (e.g. openai/gpt-5-chat)
• commands.ask_to_run: if true, idk prompts to execute commands

Usage

# Ask a question
idk list the largest files in this directory

idk will stream a response like:

$ du -sh * | sort -h
  Summarizes sizes of entries and sorts ascending.

If ask_to_run is enabled, you'll be prompted:

> run command? [y/n]:

Press y to execute in your current shell (Windows uses /C, others use -c).

Build from source

• Requirements: Go 1.24+
• Build: go build -o idk (Windows will produce idk.exe)