AI Features Overview

Features

Kaku Assistant

Kaku Assistant has two modes: automatic error recovery and on-demand command generation from natural language.

Setup

Run kaku ai to open the AI settings panel. Enable Kaku Assistant, pick a provider, and enter your API key.

Provider	Base URL	Models
OpenAI	`https://api.openai.com/v1`	(free text)
Custom	(manual)	(free text)

Selecting a provider auto-fills the base URL and populates the model dropdown.

Error recovery

When a command exits with a non-zero status, Kaku Assistant automatically sends the failed command, exit code, working directory, and git branch to the LLM and displays a suggested fix inline. Press Cmd + Shift + E to paste the suggestion into the terminal. Dangerous commands (e.g. rm -rf, git reset --hard) are pasted but never auto-executed.

The assistant does not trigger on: Ctrl+C exits, help flags, bare package manager calls, git pull conflicts, or non-shell foreground processes.

Natural language to command

Type # <description> at the prompt and press Enter to generate a shell command from plain English. Kaku intercepts the line before the shell sees it, sends your query along with the current directory and git branch to the LLM, and injects the resulting command back into the prompt ready to review and run.

# list all files modified in the last 7 days
# find and kill the process on port 3000
# compress the src folder excluding node_modules

The # prefix works in both zsh and fish. The original query stays visible while the request is in flight. If the model cannot produce a safe command, it injects a short explanation instead. Dangerous commands are loaded but flagged for review, never auto-executed.

assistant.toml fields

The config lives at ~/.config/kaku/assistant.toml:

Field	Description
`enabled`	`true` to enable, `false` to disable
`api_key`	Your provider API key
`model`	Model identifier, e.g. `DeepSeek-V3.2`
`base_url`	OpenAI-compatible API root URL
`custom_headers`	Extra HTTP headers for enterprise proxies, e.g. `["X-Customer-ID: your-id"]`

Lazygit Integration

Press Cmd + Shift + G to launch lazygit in the current pane. Kaku auto-detects the lazygit binary from PATH or common Homebrew locations.

When a git repo has uncommitted changes and lazygit has not been used in that directory yet, Kaku shows a one-time hint to remind you it is available.

Install lazygit with brew install lazygit or via kaku init.

Yazi File Manager

Press Cmd + Shift + Y to launch yazi in the current pane. The shell wrapper y also launches yazi and syncs the shell working directory on exit.

Theme sync: Kaku automatically updates ~/.config/yazi/theme.toml to match the active color scheme (Kaku Dark or Kaku Light). No manual yazi theme setup needed.

Install yazi with brew install yazi or via kaku init.

Remote Files

Press Cmd + Shift + R to mount the current SSH session’s remote filesystem locally via sshfs and open it in yazi.

Kaku auto-detects the SSH target from the active pane. The mount lives at ~/Library/Caches/dev.kaku/sshfs/<host>.

Requirements: sshfs installed (brew install macfuse sshfs) and passwordless SSH auth (key-based) for the remote host.

Shell Suite

Kaku ships a curated set of shell plugins that load automatically inside Kaku sessions.

Zsh plugins (built-in)

z: Smarter cd that learns your most-used directories. Use z <dir>, z -l <dir> to list matches, z -t for recent directories.
zsh-completions: Extended completions for common CLI tools.
zsh-syntax-highlighting: Real-time command coloring and error highlighting.
zsh-autosuggestions: Fish-style history-based completions as you type.

Fish support

Run kaku init to provision ~/.config/kaku/fish/kaku.fish for fish users. kaku doctor verifies both zsh and fish integration paths.

Optional tools (installed via kaku init)

Starship: Fast, customizable prompt with git and environment info.
Delta: Syntax-highlighting pager for git diff and grep.
Lazygit: Terminal git UI.
Yazi: Terminal file manager.

Disabling Smart Tab

If you use your own completion workflow like fzf-tab, add this before sourcing the Kaku shell integration:

export KAKU_SMART_TAB_DISABLE=1

set -gx KAKU_SMART_TAB_DISABLE 1