Chacha CLI - Aman and Aayush

Chacha is a productivity-first developer assistant for your terminal. It wraps common Git and AI-assisted workflows behind a single CLI so you can review changes, craft commits, and explain code without leaving your shell.

Key Features

• Smart commits – stage files interactively (Questionary) or all at once, auto-generate a commit message, confirm the branch, and push in one go.
• Explain code – send source or PDFs to your configured AI provider and get a concise explanation back.
• Fix suggestions – experiment with AI-generated refactors or fixes for a given file.
• Explain commit history – summarize the latest commit by feeding the message and diff to the AI.
• Branch insights (planned) – Rich-powered dashboard to inspect remote branches, latest commit metadata, and divergence status.

Installation

Getting Started 🚀

Install the published CLI straight from the repository:

# Install latest main
pipx install --spec git+https://github.com/Professor-Virus/chacha.git@main chacha-cli

# Uninstall
pipx uninstall chacha-cli

API Key Setup

1. chacha setup run
   • This will guide you through picking your AI model.
   • Your API key will be store in your ./zshrc or ./bashrc

Set up process below

Smart commit workflow

1. chacha commit run
   • Presents a multi-select list of changed files (Questionary).
   • Shows a generated commit message, the target branch, and asks for confirmation.
   • On approval, commits and pushes to the current or specified branch.

Example below - You will have the proper commit message, I ran out of API credits.

2. chacha commit run --auto
   • Stages every changed file without prompting before generating the commit message.

Explain commit workflow

1. chacha explain commit [TARGET] or --spec --> TARGET is a commit hash --> --spec will expain the last commit

2. chacha explain commit -c N --> Explains the past N commits

Last Step

Local development

Use pipx to install from your working tree and pick up changes quickly:

# first install
pipx install .

# reinstall after edits
pipx reinstall .

# if changes fail to appear
pipx uninstall chacha-cli
pipx install .

From GitHub

Install the published CLI straight from the repository:

# latest main
pipx install --spec git+https://github.com/Professor-Virus/chacha.git@main chacha-cli

# specific branch
pipx install --spec git+https://github.com/Professor-Virus/chacha.git@feature/my-branch chacha-cli

# update
pipx uninstall chacha-cli
pipx install --spec git+https://github.com/Professor-Virus/chacha.git@main chacha-cli

GitHub installs require your changes to be pushed. For local experimentation prefer pipx install ..

Configuration

Chacha detects which AI provider to use based on environment variables:

• Explicit selection
  • CHACHA_PROVIDER=anthropic with CLAUDE_API_KEY
  • CHACHA_PROVIDER=gemini with GEMINI_API_KEY (or GOOGLE_API_KEY)
• Auto-detection (no CHACHA_PROVIDER)
  • CLAUDE_API_KEY present → uses Anthropic
  • Otherwise falls back to Gemini if GEMINI_API_KEY or GOOGLE_API_KEY is present

Examples:

# Anthropic (Claude)
export CHACHA_PROVIDER=anthropic
export CLAUDE_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

# Google Gemini
export CHACHA_PROVIDER=gemini
export GEMINI_API_KEY=AIza...

The CLI requires Python 3.9+ and keeps third-party dependencies minimal.

Roadmap Ideas

• Rich-based branch monitor with live status and interactive checkouts (using Questionary prompts for actions).
• AI-assisted “apply fix” flow that writes changes directly to files.
• Template-driven commit messages for conventional commits.

License

MIT