# llm by Simon Willison

15 Hacker News commenters recommended llm by Simon Willison and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free command-line tool for sending prompts to cloud and local AI models, often used as a building block in other tools. Critics dislike how it stores template state.

## Why people recommend it

- Good building block for custom tools (4 comments): "Like I wanted a tool that can summarise different sources quickly, took me ~3 hours to build it using llm + fragments + OpenAI API." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46587088)) "`llm` gives my tool a standard bin to call to invoke completions, and configuring and managing it is the user's responsibility." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46566333)) "use a lightweight one, such as @simonw's llm" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46071638))
- Works with cloud and local models (2 comments): "This is of course cross-platform and works with both models accessible through an API and local ones." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46565412)) "no need for ollama, simonw's llm tool is good enough" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47587450))
- Lightweight and good enough (2 comments): "no need for ollama, simonw's llm tool is good enough" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47587450)) "use a lightweight one, such as @simonw's llm" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46071638))

## What people warn about

- Dislikes how it stores templates (1 comments): "I don't like the way it stores template state." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46074249))
- Prefers files in project directory (1 comments): "I prefer a tool like this to default to storing things in a file or files in the project directory" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46085856))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Showboat](https://hackerapproved.com/p/showboat.md): 10 recommend
- [Runprompt](https://hackerapproved.com/p/runprompt.md): 8 recommend
- [OfficeCLI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/officecli.md): 7 recommend
- [Claudraband](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claudraband.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "llm by Simon Willison", https://hackerapproved.com/p/llm/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).