Reference

Ciralgo CLI, command-line access to the EU-hosted LLM proxy

The Ciralgo CLI brings the EU-hosted LLM proxy to your terminal and CI pipeline. One command to chat, script, or run governance-aware LLM calls without leaving the shell. Wire-compatible with OpenAI and Anthropic SDK output.

Published 17 July 2026 Updated 24 August 2026 6 min read

The Ciralgo CLI is the command-line interface to the Ciralgo EU-hosted LLM proxy. It brings the same governance-aware LLM access that your applications get through the SDK straight into your terminal, your CI pipelines, and your automation scripts. Every call routes through the same EU proxy, honours the same policies, and lands in the same audit trail, whether the request came from a running service or a developer at a laptop.

This page describes what the Ciralgo CLI does, when it fits your workflow, and how it will integrate with the wider Ciralgo platform once released. The CLI is currently in private beta with a small group of design partners, with public availability planned for later in 2026. Join the notify list at the bottom to hear the moment the first stable version ships.

What the Ciralgo CLI is for

Most LLM access happens through SDKs embedded in application code. That is the right pattern for production traffic. The Ciralgo CLI covers the workflows where an SDK is overkill or unavailable:

Ad-hoc terminal chat when a developer needs a quick answer from a governed model without opening a browser
Shell pipelines that pass prompts through xargs, jq, or ripgrep and expect stdout back
CI/CD jobs that need model access for code review, changelog generation, or release-note drafting
One-off scripts written in bash, PowerShell, or fish that consume model output as text
Data engineering pipelines where an LLM call is one step in a longer make or airflow graph

In each of these cases the developer wants the same benefits the Ciralgo SDK provides through code, without writing a script that imports a client library.

Design principles behind the Ciralgo CLI

The Ciralgo CLI is being built around four principles, in this order.

Wire-compatible output by default. The CLI produces the same JSON shape that OpenAI and Anthropic SDKs emit for the equivalent call. Pipe it through jq. Redirect it to a file. Parse it in Go or Python with existing SDKs. Nothing new to learn.

Governance travels with you. Every command respects the same policies as your SDK calls: PII redaction, provider allowlists, jurisdiction routing, cost caps per team. The CLI is not an escape hatch that lets developers bypass company rules from the terminal.

Zero mandatory configuration for the common case. After one auth step, the default provider, default model, and default cost bucket come from your team profile. Overrides are one flag away.

Same audit trail as everything else. Every terminal-issued prompt lands in the same tamper-evident audit log as SDK calls. Compliance teams see one unified record, not "developer laptop unknowns".

Planned command surface

The initial stable release is expected to cover this command set. Names may change slightly before v1.

ciralgo login for one-time interactive authentication
ciralgo chat for interactive terminal chat with history recall
ciralgo prompt for one-shot prompts that read from arguments or stdin
ciralgo run for scripted invocation with structured input and output
ciralgo models list and ciralgo models info for provider and jurisdiction inspection
ciralgo policy show for viewing which policies apply to your session
ciralgo audit tail for a live feed of your own audit records during development
ciralgo cost for per-command and per-session spend attribution
ciralgo config for local defaults, aliases, and profile switching

Each command has structured output (--output json), coloured human output by default, and non-zero exit codes on failure that scripts can rely on.

How the Ciralgo CLI fits into CI/CD

The CLI is designed to run inside GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Jenkins without special handling. Authentication uses short-lived tokens issued to service identities, not long-lived keys stored as secrets. Team cost buckets can be scoped per pipeline, so AI spend from a CI job attributes back to the owning project rather than to whichever developer set up the workflow.

Typical CI use cases:

Pull request review helpers that summarise diffs and flag risks
Release-note generation from commit history
Docs freshness checks that compare markdown against product behaviour
Test-failure triage that groups similar failures and drafts an initial hypothesis
Migration script generation from schema diffs

In all cases the same policies (which models are allowed, which jurisdictions are permitted, what data can leave the tenant) apply to CI as apply to developer workstations. Different rules for different environments would defeat the point of a governance layer.

Availability and how to get access

The Ciralgo CLI is in private beta as of mid-2026 with a small number of design partners. Public availability is expected later in 2026. The following channels announce releases in order:

The notify list on this page for the first public build
The Ciralgo Insights hub for the launch write-up
The Ciralgo docs site for install instructions and reference

The CLI is written to be trivially installable through common package managers on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Exact commands will be published on the docs site at release time.

Frequently asked questions about the Ciralgo CLI

Does the Ciralgo CLI require an existing Ciralgo account?

Yes. The CLI authenticates against your existing Ciralgo tenant. If you do not have a Ciralgo account yet, sign up on the pricing page and pick the tier that matches your team. The CLI is available on all paid plans and on the free tier with rate limits.

Is the Ciralgo CLI open source?

The plan is to release the CLI source under a permissive licence at the same time as the first public build. That gives customers the ability to audit exactly what happens when they type a command, contribute enhancements, and self-package if their environment requires it.

Can I use the Ciralgo CLI in a CI environment without exposing keys?

Yes. CI authentication uses short-lived tokens minted per pipeline run, not long-lived API keys stored in secrets managers. This makes the CLI safer to use in build systems than most SDK deployments today. Details will be in the docs at release.

Does the CLI honour EU data residency?

Yes. The CLI is a thin client to the Ciralgo proxy. All model traffic still flows through the same EU-hosted proxy that the SDK uses. No prompt or completion ever leaves the EU unless a policy explicitly permits a US-hosted provider for a specific workflow.

Which shells and operating systems will the Ciralgo CLI support?

At launch: bash, zsh, and fish on Linux and macOS, PowerShell and cmd on Windows. Interactive chat, tab completion, and history recall work in all of them. Support for nushell and Windows Terminal integrations are planned for a later release.

How does the Ciralgo CLI compare to the OpenAI CLI?

The OpenAI CLI is a thin wrapper over the OpenAI API. The Ciralgo CLI is a thin wrapper over the Ciralgo governance proxy, which itself routes to OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, and EU-hosted providers based on policy. The Ciralgo CLI adds governance, audit trail, cost attribution, and multi-provider routing on top of what the OpenAI CLI does.

Get notified when the Ciralgo CLI is available

The public build lands later in 2026. Join the Ciralgo waitlist or follow along on the Insights hub for release announcements and behind-the-scenes writeups on the CLI as it moves from private beta to public availability.