ciscollm-cli

ciscollm-cli is an autonomous Cisco IOS automation agent CLI powered by LLM tool-calling. It allows network engineers to configure, troubleshoot, and simulate Cisco hardware safely and efficiently with strict safety guardrails.

🚀 Core Capabilities

1. Intelligent Cisco Automation Swarm

   • Multi-agent coordination with role-based routing (Core, Distribution, Access).
   • Supports both local models (Ollama, LM Studio) and cloud endpoints (OpenRouter).

2. Enterprise-Grade Safety Guardrails

   • Command Firewall: Intercepts high-risk commands (e.g. disabling AAA, removing access groups, shutting management interfaces).
   • Dry-Run Validation: Analyzes network topology beforehand to prevent accidental disruptions.
   • Strict Command Reference: Restricts execution to valid Cisco IOS command sets indexed from cf_command_ref.pdf.

3. Atomic Transactions & Recovery

   • Atomic Replace: Backs up configuration to flash and uses configure replace to restore state on failures.
   • Command Inversion Fallback: Generates reverse commands (e.g. shutdown -> no shutdown) to recover state if flash storage is unavailable.

4. Live Visualization & Audits

   • Visual Control Dashboard: A real-time SPA showing network topology maps, agent thinking logs, configuration diffs, and manual rollbacks.
   • State Diff Engine: Displays colorized differences (green/red/yellow) in routing tables, VLANs, and interfaces.
   • Enterprise Audit Log: Local, structured audit logging (audit.log) for compliance.

5. Multi-Protocol Simulation & Adapters

   • Adapters for Serial (Plink), SSH, Telnet, NETCONF XML, and Cisco Modeling Labs (CML).
   • Stateful mock IOS simulator server and local interactive shell (ciscollm shell).

📦 Quick Start

Installation

Install the global executable via npm:

npm install -g ciscollm-cli

Starting the Simulator Server (For Testing)

Start the multi-protocol test server (SSH, Telnet, NETCONF, and Mock LLM endpoint):

ciscollm server --ssh-port 2222 --telnet-port 2323 --http-port 11434

Launching the Agent

Run the interactive setup wizard to configure the agent target and goals:

ciscollm run

🛠️ CLI Usage & Options

ciscollm run [options]

Execute configuration or optimization tasks on target hardware.

| Option / Flag | Description | Default | |---|---|---| | -g, --goal <intent> | Configuration goal. Omit to launch the Interactive Setup Wizard. | - | | --protocol <type> | Connection protocol (serial, ssh, telnet, netconf, cml). | serial | | --provider <type> | LLM provider mode (local, cloud). | local | | --local-type <type> | Local LLM service flavor (ollama, lmstudio). | ollama | | --model <name> | LLM model name. | - | | --endpoint <url> | LLM API server endpoint. | - | | --api-key <key> | Cloud provider (OpenRouter) API key. | - | | -c, --com <ports> | COM Port(s), comma-separated (e.g., COM3,COM4). | - | | --host <address> | Target IP / hostnames, comma-separated. | - | | -u, --username <name> | Login username. | - | | -p, --password <pass> | Login password. | - | | --strict-command-ref | Block commands not listed in cf_command_ref.pdf. | false | | --non-interactive | Auto-reject high-risk commands instead of prompting for approval. | false | | --rbac-role <role> | Authorization role (admin, read_only). | admin | | --dashboard-port <port> | Live Visual Dashboard port. | 3000 |

Other Commands

• ciscollm server [options] - Start mock SSH, Telnet, and LLM servers for sandbox testing.
• ciscollm shell - Launch a stateful interactive mock Cisco IOS command line directly.
• ciscollm dashboard [--port <port>] - Start the visual dashboard standalone.

💡 Quick Examples

1. Configuring Interfaces via Local Simulation (SSH)

ciscollm run --protocol ssh --host 127.0.0.1 --port 2222 -u admin -p admin --goal "Configure GigabitEthernet0/1 with IP 192.168.2.1/24 and interface description 'LAN B'"

2. Running local LLM (Ollama) against Simulation

ciscollm run --provider local --local-type ollama --endpoint http://127.0.0.1:11434/v1 --model qwen3.5:4b --protocol ssh --host 127.0.0.1 --port 2222 -u admin -p admin --goal "Show IP routing table"

3. Strict Command Reference compliance

ciscollm run --strict-command-ref --protocol ssh --host 127.0.0.1 --port 2222 -u admin -p admin --goal "Configure router ospf 1 and advertise 192.168.1.0/24"

💻 Development

1. Setup Workspace:

   git clone https://github.com/ThemeHackers/ciscollm-cli.git
   cd ciscollm-cli
   npm install

2. Build and Run:

   npm run build
   npm start -- run

3. Run Unit Tests:

   npm run test