ant-cli

README

ant-cli

Web search, content extraction, and AI-powered research from the command line. Returns JSON optimized for LLM consumption. Ships with six Claude Code skills.

Uses ZhiPu APIs when authenticated; otherwise falls back to DuckDuckGo + Bing scraping and a headless-browser extractor — so it works with or without an API key.

Install

Pick whichever fits your environment.

npx (no Go toolchain needed):

npx -y @islasola/ant-cli@latest --version

Go install (Go 1.26+):

go install github.com/islasola/ant-cli/cmd/ant@latest

Direct binary:

OS=$(uname -s); ARCH=$(uname -m)
curl -L "https://github.com/islasola/ant-cli/releases/latest/download/ant_${OS}_${ARCH}.tar.gz" \
  | tar -xz -C /usr/local/bin ant

Quick start

# (Optional) Authenticate with ZhiPu for higher-quality results.
# Without this, ant uses DuckDuckGo + Bing automatically.
ant auth login

# Install the bundled Claude Code skills (~/.claude/skills/).
ant skills install

# Search.
ant search "your query" --json

# Extract a page.
ant extract "https://example.com/article" --json

# Deep research with citations (requires auth).
ant research "your topic" --json

For a guided one-shot setup inside Claude Code, ask Claude to run the ant-onboarding skill — it detects what's missing and walks you through it.

Subcommands

Command	What it does
ant search	Web search, returns titles/URLs/snippets/content
ant extract	Pull clean markdown or text from a URL
ant research	Multi-source AI research with inline citations
ant auth login	Set the ZhiPu API key
ant skills install	Copy bundled SKILL.md files into ~/.claude/skills/

Every subcommand supports --json for structured output.

Bundled skills

ant skills install writes these into ~/.claude/skills/:

• ant-cli — overall workflow and command reference
• ant-search — web search
• ant-extract — URL → markdown/text
• ant-research — deep research with citations
• ant-dynamic-search — context-isolated programmatic search (for agentic use)
• ant-onboarding — guided first-time setup

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/islasola/ant-cli
cd ant-cli
make build         # produces ./bin/ant
make install       # copies to /usr/local/bin/ant

License

MIT.