# Clive — a friendly CLI for local LLMs

> Source: <https://dev.to/sedarolmez94/clive-a-friendly-cli-for-local-llms-36l9>
> Published: 2026-08-01 20:21:19+00:00

For the last couple of weeks, as the cost of frontier models kept climbing, I started experimenting with open-source large language models.

What surprised me: for most of the tasks I'd normally hand to Claude or GPT, a **local** open-source model did the job just as well — and sometimes better.

The problem was the ergonomics. [Ollama](https://ollama.com/) makes running local models genuinely easy, but I wanted a smoother terminal workflow — streaming chat that didn't feel clunky, safe file editing, and the ability to run real multi-file agent tasks without leaving my shell.

So I built **Clive** 🦀 — a local-first coding-assistant CLI powered by Ollama.

Everything runs on your machine. No prompts, code, or files ever leave your computer.

`serve`

, `pull`

, `rm`

, model recommendationsIt's written in **Rust**, MIT-licensed, and just hit its first release, `v0.1.0`

.

```
bash
# Clone and install (from source for now)
git clone https://github.com/SedarOlmez94/clive.git
cd clive
cargo install --path .

# Start Ollama and pull a coding model
clive ollama serve --detach
clive ollama pull qwen2.5-coder:latest

# Chat!
clive chat "Explain Rust's ownership model in two sentences"

# Or run an autonomous agent over your files (preview first)
clive agent "Refactor error handling and add tests" \
  --files src/main.rs \
  --verify "cargo check -q"
```