Vercel AI CLI

Canonical version: 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 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 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

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