Why you'd want it
LLM is Simon Willison's CLI tool and Python library for OpenAI, Claude, Gemini and dozens of other models, via remote APIs or models installed on your own machine. Plugins such as llm-anthropic, llm-gemini and llm-ollama add providers, and llm openai endpoint targets any OpenAI-compatible Chat Completions server without configuration. Prompts and responses are stored in SQLite, and it also generates embeddings, extracts structured content with schemas and lets models execute tools.
Best for
- Scripting LLM calls in the shell
- Comparing models from one CLI
- Keeping a searchable log of prompts
Use it when
You want quick model access from the terminal or a small Python library, with every prompt and response logged locally.
Skip it if
You need a shared gateway with keys and spend tracking for a team; this is a CLI and Python library. Providers other than OpenAI need a plugin installed.