# Vercel AI CLI The Vercel AI CLI (`ai-cli`, by Vercel Labs) is a lightweight, **agent-native** command-line tool for generating images, video, and text from the terminal. It uses the [[Vercel AI SDK]] and [[Vercel AI Gateway|AI Gateway]] for unified access to hundreds of models across providers. ## Key points - **Commands** — `ai image`, `ai video`, `ai text` (with vision), `ai models`. Model IDs follow `creator/model-name`. - **Providers** — OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and more via the AI Gateway. - **Unix-style piping** — chain operations (e.g. generate an image, pipe it straight into a video); accepts local files, URLs, and stdin. - **Multi-model compare** — run one prompt across several models with `-m a,b,c` for side-by-side output. - **Inline preview** — renders generated images/video inline in terminals supporting the Kitty graphics protocol. - **Agent-friendly** — predictable output, JSON metadata mode, composable piping; "designed to be used by both humans and agents." - **Install** — `npm install -g ai-cli`, set `AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY`. - **Stack & license** — TypeScript, Bun runtime; Apache-2.0. A media/text generation counterpart to coding-focused CLIs — same [[AI SDKs|AI SDK]] foundation, but aimed at composable generation pipelines rather than codebase agents. ## References - Repository: https://github.com/vercel-labs/ai-cli - Website: https://ai-cli.dev/ - Docs: https://ai-cli.dev/docs ## Related - [[Vercel AI SDK]] - [[Vercel AI Gateway]] - [[AI SDKs]] - [[Bun]] - [[Vercel]]