zhihu-cli

CLI for the Zhihu Open Platform API.

Supports authentication, Zhihu search, global web search, and the Zhida chat completion API.

Installation

From npm (recommended for Agent environments)

npm install -g @dawnswwwww/zhihu-cli
zhihu --help

From Homebrew

brew tap dawnswwwww/tap
brew install zhihu-cli

From crates.io

cargo install zhihu-cli

From GitHub Releases

Download the prebuilt archive for your platform from the Releases page, extract it, and place the zhihu binary in your PATH.

Quick start

# Authenticate with your Access Secret
zhihu auth login

# Or set it directly
zhihu auth set-secret <YOUR_ACCESS_SECRET>

# Search Zhihu
zhihu search zhihu "Rust 入门" --count 5

# Search the whole web
zhihu search global "Rust 入门" --count 5

# Ask Zhida
zhihu ask "Rust 和 Go 怎么选？" --model thinking

Claude Skill

This repository includes a Claude skill to help you use zhihu-cli from Claude Code or Claude.ai.

Install it with the Skills CLI:

# Install from GitHub
npx skills add dawnswwwww/zhihu-cli

# Or install globally
npx skills add dawnswwwww/zhihu-cli -g

Once installed, Claude will automatically use the skill whenever you ask about searching Zhihu, using the Zhida API, or configuring zhihu-cli.

Commands

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | zhihu auth login | Interactive login (reads secret from stdin). | | zhihu auth set-secret <SECRET> | Save Access Secret directly. | | zhihu auth status | Show authentication status. | | zhihu search zhihu <QUERY> | Search within Zhihu. | | zhihu search global <QUERY> | Search the whole web. | | zhihu ask <QUERY> | Ask Zhida. Use --model fast/thinking/agent and --stream. |

Run zhihu --help or zhihu <command> --help for details.

Configuration

The CLI stores configuration (including the Access Secret) under the user's config directory, typically:

• macOS/Linux: ~/.config/zhihu-cli/config.toml
• Windows: %APPDATA%\zhihu-cli\config.toml

You can also override the secret at runtime with the ZHIHU_ACCESS_SECRET environment variable.

Development

# Run tests
make test

# Lint
make lint

# Full local CI check
make check

See docs/development.md for the full workflow.

Release

Pushing a SemVer tag triggers the release workflow:

git tag -a v0.1.3 -m "Release 0.1.3"
git push origin v0.1.3

This builds cross-platform binaries, creates a GitHub Release, publishes zhihu-cli to npm, and updates the Homebrew tap.

License

MIT