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Ahnlich CLI

The Ahnlich Command-Line Interface (CLI) is a lightweight tool that allows developers, researchers, and operators to interact directly with the Ahnlich AI and Ahnlich DB servers. It provides a simple way to issue commands using a custom Domain-Specific Language (DSL) without writing any code.

Think of the CLI as your playground for exploring Ahnlich:

  • Test queries quickly without setting up an SDK project

  • Experiment with similarity search and vector operations interactively

  • Prototype pipelines for embedding, storage, and retrieval

  • Debug servers locally before moving to production

Although the CLI is a powerful tool for testing, it is not intended as the main integration method. For production applications, the Ahnlich SDKs (Rust, Go, Python) should be used, as they provide richer APIs, better error handling, and integration capabilities.

Non-Interactive Mode​

The CLI supports a non-interactive mode via the --no-interactive flag, which is ideal for:

  • Docker health checks - Verify server availability in container orchestration
  • CI/CD pipelines - Automate testing and deployment workflows
  • Shell scripts - Integrate Ahnlich commands into automation scripts
  • Monitoring systems - Programmatically check server health and status

Usage​

In non-interactive mode, the CLI reads commands from stdin and exits immediately after processing:

# Single command via echo
echo 'PING' | ahnlich-cli ahnlich --agent db --host 127.0.0.1 --port 1369 --no-interactive

# Multiple commands via heredoc
ahnlich-cli ahnlich --agent db --host 127.0.0.1 --port 1369 --no-interactive <<EOF
PING
INFOSERVER
LISTSTORES
EOF

# Commands from a file
cat commands.txt | ahnlich-cli ahnlich --agent ai --host 127.0.0.1 --port 1370 --no-interactive

Docker Health Check Example​

services:
  ahnlich_db:
    image: ghcr.io/deven96/ahnlich-db:latest
    command: "ahnlich-db run --host 0.0.0.0"
    ports:
      - "1369:1369"
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "echo 'PING' | ahnlich-cli ahnlich --agent db --host 127.0.0.1 --port 1369 --no-interactive"]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 5s

  ahnlich_ai:
    image: ghcr.io/deven96/ahnlich-ai:latest
    command: "ahnlich-ai run --db-host ahnlich_db --host 0.0.0.0"
    ports:
      - "1370:1370"
    depends_on:
      ahnlich_db:
        condition: service_healthy
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "echo 'PING' | ahnlich-cli ahnlich --agent ai --host 127.0.0.1 --port 1370 --no-interactive"]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 10s

Exit Codes​

  • 0: All commands executed successfully
  • Non-zero: Error occurred (connection failure, invalid command, etc.)

This makes it easy to integrate with shell scripts and monitoring tools that rely on exit codes for success/failure detection.