The LLM tool is easily one of my

favourite CL’S in the past year. In my regular usage, I often bust it out to just get a quick response for a short query.

Most LLMs can’t help themselves and insist on being overly verbose. I noticed that all of my queries contained the phrase “be short” or “be direct” or some other variation therein. This is precisely what llm template addresses

Here’s what I entered into the yaml created by llm template edit default:

name: default

system: |
  Be as short, direct and concise as possible. Do not make any further
  suggestions --- I'll ask exactly what I need and nothing more. If I need some
  coding help, just return the required code with minimal explanation. Again ---
  I will ask you if I need you to explain it further. Lists are preferred

But now to use this, I need to add the flag -t default to every llm call. There’s support to configure a default model, but not a default template. Instead of dealing with the extra error-prone keystrokes, I’ve got this script at ~/.local/bin/lm:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

subcommands="prompt aliases chat collections embed embed-models embed-multi \
fragments install keys logs models openai openrouter plugins \
schemas similar templates tools uninstall"

if [[ "$1" == -* ]] || [[ " $subcommands " == *" $1 "* ]]; then
    command llm "$@"
else
    command llm -t default "$@"
fi

And now, if I call lm instead of llm, it’ll add the flag -t default unless I’ve specifically invoked a subcommand of the CLI!