SHAI – a (yet another) open-source, terminal-native AI coding assistant
Since I mostly work within the terminal, I wanted an AI coding assistant that integrates seamlessly with it. Something I could call from SSH, integrate into scripts or just invoke quickly without leaving the shell. Most existing tools (at the time) were either closed, required various dependencies, or tied to a specific vendor. I wanted a free, open-source alternative that: - installs with a single binary (useful on bare servers) - talks to any LLM endpoint and especially self-hosted open weight model - could run headless, composable, and Unix-like SHAI stands for SHell AI! Along the way I…
SHAI – a (yet another) open-source, terminal-native AI coding assistant launched on October 9, 2025 with 16 votes, #634 of 8,178 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.
In plain words
SHAI is an open-source, terminal-native AI coding assistant designed for developers who work primarily in the shell. It installs as a single binary, works with any LLM endpoint including self-hosted models, and integrates seamlessly into scripts and SSH sessions without external dependencies. Built in Rust and Unix-like in philosophy, SHAI prioritizes headless operation and modularity, allowing users to swap components or layer additional interfaces on top. The creator also developed the Rust crate shai-llm as part of the project to provide LLM abstraction similar to existing Python tools.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
shai is a coding agent, your pair programming buddy that lives in the terminal. Written in rust with love <3 - ovh/shai
In the maker’s words, at launch
Since I mostly work within the terminal, I wanted an AI coding assistant that integrates seamlessly with it. Something I could call from SSH, integrate into scripts or just invoke quickly without leaving the shell. Most existing tools (at the time) were either closed, required various dependencies, or tied to a…
Does a similar job
all alternatives →
Huzzah – a novel approach to coding with AIAug 2026 · danielvaughn.dev · ▲384Hello everyone. I've been working on this experimental editor called Huzzah. I've been working almost exclusively with coding agents since January of this year, and over the past few months I began to feel utterly exhausted by them. They're great, but I'm finding it more and more tedious to write full sentences for every change I want. Not only that, but it seems there's a complexity limit for codebases - beyond a certain point the agent begins confusing itself. I'd like to go back to writing code, but I don't want to go all the way back to fully manual coding. So I've come up with this…
ShellMate AI2024 · tkmx.odio.dev · ▲342While "burning tokens" isn't necessarily a good thing, I thought it worthwhile to throw together a quick leaderboard to track the dev setups of the top HN token burners. Jesse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Vincent), Wes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wes_McKinney), and Harper (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Reed) are using it to report their Claude/Codex usage.
More ai this month
the category →
Paintings by AI models: programs run through a simulation of oil paint.
AI · 21d ago · stillwet.art
PixVerse R2▲381A real-time world model you can explore and change
AI · 29d ago · world.pixverse.video
Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part
Launched alongside, October 2025
the whole month →
I went down the rabbit hole on a side project and ended up building this: Strange Attractors(https://blog.shashanktomar.com/posts/strange-attractors). It’s built with three.js. Working on it reminded me of the little "maths for fun" exercises I used to do while learning programming in early days. Just trying things out, getting fascinated and geeky, and being surprised by the results. I spent way too much time on this, but it was extreme fun. My favorite part: someone pointed me to the Simone Attractor on Threads. It is a 2D attractor and I asked GPT to extrapolate it to…
AI · Oct 2025 · blog.shashanktomar.com
Autism Simulator▲779Hey all, I built this. It’s not trying to capture every autistic experience (that’d be impossible). It’s based on my own lived experience as well as that of friends on the spectrum. I'm trying to give people a feel for what masking, decision fatigue, and burnout can look like day-to-day. That’s hard to explain in words, but easier to show through choices and stats. I'm not trying to "define autism". I’ve gotten good feedback here about resilience, meds, and difficulty tuning. I’ll keep tweaking it. If even a few people walk away thinking, "ah, maybe that’s why my coworker struggles in those…
Life & fun · 2025 · autism-simulator.vercel.app
