Chat 💬 (Shell)¶

Enola’s Chat is The Shell for the 2030s+ and the “last Chat you’ll ever need”.

After installing, you can use it like this:

Screencast¶

Demo

Usage¶

$ HOSTNAME=demo ./enola chat <docs/use/chat/demo.input
Welcome here! Type /help if you're lost.

runner@demo in #Lobby> /help
System> Enola.dev vf68d7b4 -- Commands:
  /whoami - Show your user details.
  /commands - Available commands.
  /help - This help.
 Say "ping" to get a "pong" back.
 @echo ... echoes your message back to you.
runner@demo in #Lobby> @echo hi
Echoer> hi
runner@demo in #Lobby> hello, world
runner@demo in #Lobby> /whoami
System> @prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .

<subject://demo/runner> rdfs:label "runner@demo" .
runner@demo in #Lobby> whoami
demo> runner
runner@demo in #Lobby> pwd
demo> /home/runner/work/enola/enola
runner@demo in #Lobby>

Exec¶

Note how the last two “messages” in the example chat above were whoami and pwd.

They were both executed as commands on the local system. (Whereas the /whoami with slash was not a system executable but a built-in command.)

In order to avoid confusion with certain terms which are both typically valid UNIX command names but also valid natural language words which you may well start a prompt to the LLM, a hard-coded list excludes them from being executed as commands (e.g. who and time or uptime etc.).

Prefixing input with $ followed by a space (to avoid potential future confusion with environment variables) will force it to be interpreted as a command to be executed instead (e.g. $ uptime).

Commands are currently executed using /usr/bin/env bash -c ..., but this may be changed in the future.

AI¶

If you have Ollama up and running locally on its default port 11434, then this Chat will have an LLM> participant using gemma3:1b which will chime into the conversation, like this:

$ ./enola chat
Welcome here! Type /help if you're lost.

vorburger@yara in #Lobby> hi
LLM> Hi there! How’s your day going so far? 😊
Is there anything you'd like to chat about, or anything I can help you with today?

vorburger@yara in #Lobby> how ya feel'
LLM> As an AI, I don't have feelings in the same way humans do. However, I can say that I’m functioning well and ready to assist you! 😊

It’s a good day for me to be here. How about you? How are *you* feeling today?

This will be extended to support other 🔮 LLMs and 🪛 Tools and 🕵🏾‍♀️ Agents in the future - watch this space.

SSH¶

This Chat feature is also available via an SSH server!

Exec is only enabled in (local) enola chat, but disabled over SSH.

/whoami includes the public key of the user connected over SSH.

Configuration¶

Your ~/.inputrc and /etc/inputrc are loaded on startup. For example, to bind Ctrl-Backspace, do echo '"\C-h": backward-kill-word' >> ~/.inputrc.

The line editor has mouse support, e.g. to click on the prompt line to move the cursor.

History is persisted e.g. in ~/.local/share/enola/history.

See Help doc for all other options.