Show HN: Lmcli v0.5.0 – A useable tool for LLM minimalists

Posted by wolttam on Sunday April 19, 2026 @03:58PM
from the show-hn dept.

I have put a lot of hours into making `lmcli` my go-to tool for all of my work with LLMs, including coding!

Written in Go for snappy performance and a lean codebase.

I wanted a tool that did not put heavy layers abstraction between me and the model, and I think `lmcli` succeeds at this. Support for more use-cases have gradually been added, but only as those use-cases have become apparent as "fundamental" to LLM usage, e.g. the agentic tool-calling loop.

`lmcli` doesn't come with a built in agent - agents are configured with a system prompt and set of available tools. The README merely provides an example of how one build a coding agent with `lmcli` (one that happens to work pretty well!)

v0.5.0 adds image support. Yes, support for attaching images to conversations in a TUI! And it doesn't feel awful?

It's not perfect, but I think it's good enough for others to find useful.

Enjoy.

( 2 comments | 2 points | on HN )

Re:Show HN: Lmcli v0.5.0 – A useable tool for LLM minimalists by nigardev on Sunday April 19, 2026 @06:35PM (#47828263)

go for the cli approach makes sense. the no-builtin-agent choice is smart - keeps it lean. do you support streaming output, and how do you handle the tool-calling loop. do you just output the function call json and let the user decide what to do next, or is there some automation there

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Lmcli v0.5.0 – A useable tool for LLM minimalists by wolttam on Sunday April 19, 2026 @06:45PM (#47828340)

There's a simple read-write-execute (rwx) permission model in the TUI. You can press ctrl+p to cycle through the level of tool automation. E.g. press ctrl+p once to auto-approve Read/Grep/Glob tools, press it again to auto-approve Write/Edit, and so on.

Note: the CLI flow (`lmcli prompt|new|reply`) auto-approves all tools at the moment

Streaming is of course supported!

Note: Diffs of file edits are presented for a smoother confirmation flow.

Also: reasonably sure you're a bot. Those are frowned upon here!

[ Parent | on HN ]