nlp2terminal

Press a hotkey in any terminal, type what you want in plain English, and the generated shell command lands directly on your command line — no copy/paste, just press Enter to run it (or edit/cancel it first, since it's a normal editable line).

How it works

nlp2terminal is one small binary with a prompt subcommand that:

1. reads your one-line request from the real terminal,
2. calls an OpenAI-compatible chat completions endpoint,
3. prints only the generated command to stdout (all UI goes to stderr).

A tiny per-shell snippet (installed via nlp2terminal init <shell>) binds a key to a widget/function that runs nlp2terminal prompt, captures its stdout, and replaces the current input line with it — using each shell's own line-editing hook (zsh ZLE, bash bind -x, fish bind, PowerShell's PSReadLine). That's what makes "press Enter and it just runs" possible: the terminal never sees "output," it sees you typing a command.

Install

npm install -g nlp2terminal

(Or from source: npm install && npm run build && npm link.)

Configure the AI provider

If you already export an API key for a common provider — which most people do, for other CLIs/SDKs — nlp2terminal picks it up automatically, with a sensible default base URL and model, and you don't need to configure anything:

| Env var already in your shell | Provider | |---|---| | OPENAI_API_KEY | OpenAI | | ANTHROPIC_API_KEY | Anthropic | | GROQ_API_KEY | Groq | | GEMINI_API_KEY / GOOGLE_API_KEY | Google Gemini | | MISTRAL_API_KEY | Mistral | | DEEPSEEK_API_KEY | DeepSeek | | TOGETHER_API_KEY | Together AI | | OPENROUTER_API_KEY | OpenRouter | | XAI_API_KEY | xAI (Grok) | | FIREWORKS_API_KEY | Fireworks AI | | PERPLEXITY_API_KEY | Perplexity | | OLLAMA_HOST | local Ollama (no key needed) |

For anything else — a self-hosted vLLM server, a specific model/base URL override, or a provider not in the table above — set these three, either as real environment variables or in ~/.config/nlp2terminal/.env (see .env.example):

AI_PROVIDER_BASE_URL=https://api.openai.com/v1
AI_PROVIDER_MODEL=gpt-4o-mini
AI_PROVIDER_API_KEY=sk-...

AI_PROVIDER_* always wins per-field when set, so you can mix and match — e.g. keep using your existing OPENAI_API_KEY for auth but set just AI_PROVIDER_MODEL=gpt-4.1 to override the model.

Any OpenAI-compatible /chat/completions endpoint works.

Using a "thinking"/reasoning model? It writes out its reasoning before the answer — sometimes 1000+ tokens' worth — and if it gets cut off mid-thought you'll see an explanation instead of a command. Raise the response budget with AI_PROVIDER_MAX_TOKENS (default 4096):

AI_PROVIDER_MAX_TOKENS=8192

Verify it's wired up correctly — this also prints which provider/env vars were detected:

nlp2terminal doctor

Enable the hotkey

Add one line to your shell's profile, then restart your shell (or source it).

| Shell | Add to | Line | |---|---|---| | zsh | ~/.zshrc | eval "$(nlp2terminal init zsh)" | | bash | ~/.bashrc | eval "$(nlp2terminal init bash)" | | fish | ~/.config/fish/config.fish | nlp2terminal init fish \| source | | PowerShell | $PROFILE | Invoke-Expression (nlp2terminal init powershell \| Out-String) |

This installs two entry points in your shell:

• Alt+K (Option+K on macOS) — live hotkey, edits your current line in place.
• l2t <request> — type it as a normal command instead of using the hotkey, e.g. l2t list files over 5mb.

By default this binds Alt+K, not Ctrl+K — Ctrl+K is already kill-line in most shells/terminals and reliably collides with other tools, whereas Alt+K is conventionally unbound. Alt-combos are sent as the byte sequence ESC followed by the letter (\x1bk), which is how terminals represent "Meta" keys at the protocol level — not a Kitty-keyboard-protocol sequence, so it works on old and new terminals alike, on Linux and in Windows Terminal/PowerShell, with no configuration needed there.

Getting Alt+K (Option+K) working on macOS

macOS terminal apps generally treat Option+key as a way to type accented or special characters (e.g. Option+K types "˚" on a US layout) rather than sending ESC+k, unless the terminal is told otherwise. Pick your terminal:

iTerm2 — Preferences → Keys → Key Mappings → + → record Option+K → Action: "Send Hex Code" → value 0x1b 0x6b. (Scoped to just this one key combo, so other Option-based accented characters keep working.)

Terminal.app — Preferences → Profiles → Keyboard tab → check "Use Option as Meta Key". This is a blanket toggle (affects all Option combos, not just K), since Terminal.app has no per-key remapping.

Warp — Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts → add a custom binding for Option+K sending the escape sequence \x1bk.

kitty (~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf):

map opt+k send_text all \x1bk

Alacritty (~/.config/alacritty/alacritty.toml) — either set Option to act as Alt globally:

option_as_alt = "Both"

or scope it to just this key:

[[keyboard.bindings]]
key = "K"
mods = "Alt"
chars = "k"

WezTerm (~/.wezterm.lua):

config.send_composed_key_when_left_alt_is_pressed = false
config.keys = {
  { key = "k", mods = "ALT", action = wezterm.action.SendString("\x1bk") },
}

Usage

Live hotkey

Press Alt+K. A ✦ prompt appears right on your current line:

✦ find all png files over 5mb in this folder and list them by size

Press Enter once to generate — a moment later the line is replaced with:

find . -iname '*.png' -size +5M -exec du -h {} + | sort -rh

Press Enter again to run it, or edit it first, or Ctrl+C to cancel.

l2t as a normal command

$ l2t find all png files over 5mb in this folder and list them by size

• zsh: the generated command is staged directly into your next prompt's edit buffer (zsh's native print -z) — just press Enter.
• bash / fish / PowerShell: there's no equivalent built-in to pre-fill the next prompt in these shells (and the lower-level trick some tools use to simulate keystrokes, TIOCSTI, is disabled by default on most current Linux kernels for security). The command is staged into your shell history instead — press Up-Arrow, then Enter to run it.

License

Eligapris License (a modified MIT License) — free for personal and non-commercial use with attribution; redistribution, resale, and commercial use require permission from Eligapris. See LICENSE for the full terms.