You can read documentation all day, but nothing beats seeing a tool in action. I put together seven quick demos that showcase yaak's most powerful features — the ones that turn it from "neat idea" into "I use this ten times a day."

Here's what I built.

1. Interactive setup wizard — zero friction onboarding

yaak config wizard

First-time setup shouldn't feel like work. Run yaak --config and you get an interactive wizard that walks you through:

  • Language selection — pick from eight supported languages
  • Model provider — Anthropic, Google Gemini, OpenAI, Ollama, Groq, and more
  • Model configuration — choose your model and set preferences

No hunting through docs. No editing YAML files. Just answer a few prompts and start using yaak immediately.

$ yaak --config

The wizard detects existing config and lets you update individual settings without starting over. Perfect for when you want to switch models or try a different provider.

2. Kill processes like a human would ask

yaak kill port

"What's using port 3000?" is the kind of thing I used to Google, copy a lsof command, run it, get a PID, then remember the kill syntax. With yaak, I just ask:

$ yaak find what's using port 3000
  Command: lsof -ti:3000 | xargs kill -9
  Execute? [y/N]

yaak streams the command, waits for confirmation, and you're done. No context switching, no Stack Overflow, no remembering flags.

This is the headline feature — plain English to executable shell commands in seconds.

3. Spin up services without memorizing Docker flags

yaak docker postgres

Docker commands are powerful but verbose. Starting a Postgres container with custom password and port? That's a wall of flags you definitely don't have memorized:

$ yaak run postgres in docker with password mysecret on port 5433
  Command: docker run --name postgres -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=mysecret -p 5433:5432 -d postgres
  Execute? [y/N]

yaak translates your intent into the right docker run command with all the flags in the right order. Works for any service — Redis, MongoDB, Nginx, whatever you need.

4. Git log queries that actually make sense

yaak git log

Git has incredible power buried under flags you can never remember. Want a brief summary of commits from the last two days?

$ yaak show commits from the last 2 days. show a brief summary
  Command: git log --since="2 days ago" --oneline --no-merges
  Execute? [y/N]

yaak knows --since, --oneline, --no-merges, and hundreds of other git flags. You just describe what you want to see.

5. Project-aware commands with --context

yaak context build

Pass --context and yaak reads your project structure — Cargo.toml, package.json, go.mod, Dockerfile, git branch, directory layout — and generates commands that understand what kind of project you're in:

$ yaak --context build and test the project
  Command: cargo build && cargo test
  Execute? [y/N]

No need to specify "use cargo" or "this is a Rust project." yaak detects it and does the right thing automatically. Works for npm, Go, Python, Docker, and more.

Context is opt-in by design. Simple queries stay fast, but when you need project awareness, it's there.

6. Explain scary commands before you run them

yaak explain

Found a Stack Overflow answer with a command you don't fully trust? Use --explain to break it down:

$ yaak --explain 'find . -name "*.log" -mtime +30 -delete'

yaak walks through each part of the command, explains what it does, flags destructive operations, and tells you exactly what will happen before you execute anything.

Perfect for:

  • Learning new commands
  • Code review
  • Debugging shell scripts
  • Making sure you don't accidentally nuke production logs

7. Cache results for instant replay

yaak cache

How many times have I asked the same question? Weather forecasts, file conversions, database queries — some things I look up over and over. With --cache, yaak remembers:

$ yaak get the weather forecasts for San Francisco, Tokyo, and London. save as json.
  [15 seconds of API calls and processing]

$ yaak --cache get the weather forecasts for San Francisco, Tokyo, and London. save as json.
  [instant response from cache]

The first run (without --cache) fetches data from weather APIs and processes it. The second run with --cache? Instant replay from the cached result. Cache lookup uses exact match first, then fuzzy BM25 matching, so minor variations still hit the cache.

Great for expensive operations like multi-city weather comparisons, video processing, or any API-heavy task I repeat throughout the day.

Try them yourself

Install yaak and try these commands yourself:

$ curl -fsSL https://getyaak.ai/install.sh | bash

See the installation docs for other options.

Set YAAK_API_KEY (or run yaak --config for the wizard), and you're ready to go.

yaak is open source under the Apache-2.0 license. → getyaak.ai · GitHub