# Runprompt

8 Hacker News commenters recommended Runprompt and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Runs .prompt files from the command line, so LLM calls can be chained in shell pipelines with less typing and more control. Critics note it falls back to string input when JSON fails to parse.

## Why people recommend it

- Chains LLM calls in shell pipelines (2 comments): "I love the idea of throwing LLM calls in a bash pipe" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46071325)) "Less typing. More control over chaining prompts together. Reproducibility." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46074278))
- Lighter than full agent stacks (2 comments): "feels way more ergonomic than spinning up a whole agent stack" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46073308)) "feel much less disempowering, while still giving you a productivity boost" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46663950))
- Simple, functional, not hyped (2 comments): "Functional and useful, not trying to be "the next big thing"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46070483)) "Glad to see a post about enabling simple workflows!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46071023))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [llm by Simon Willison](https://hackerapproved.com/p/llm.md): 15 recommend
- [Showboat](https://hackerapproved.com/p/showboat.md): 10 recommend
- [OfficeCLI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/officecli.md): 7 recommend
- [Claudraband](https://hackerapproved.com/p/claudraband.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

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