LLMing for free

Fri Dec 20 2024

You can use the awesome llm tool for free with one of the best models available today! In this small post, I’ll show you how to do it in a few easy steps.

We’ll setup llm with the new Gemini models from Google. These are currently Top #1 and #2 in LLM arena benchmarks.

Install llm

I recommend installing llm using the uv tool install command from uv. Since we’ll be using Gemini models, we need to install the Gemini plugin too.

uv tool install --with llm-gemini llm

Now you should have the command llm available in your CLI.

Configuring llm

This step is easy. Go to Google AI Studio and grab an API key from the big blue Get API key. Then, run this command so llm asks you about the keys.

llm keys set gemini

Once the key is set, you’re done! You should be able to run something like this with your preferred prompt.

llm -m gemini-2.0-flash-exp "Count to 10"

Using llm

The most straightforward way of using llm is as shown before. To make things smoother, let’s set a default model. There are many models (you can list them with llm models). Here are two that make a perfect default models given the ones available today: gemini-2.0-flash-exp or gemini-2.0-flash-thinking-exp-1219.

llm models default gemini-2.0-flash-exp

That’s it! You can now use llm directly without any flags.

llm "Count to 10"

Speaking of flags though, there are a few interesting ones you should know.

• -s to set the system prompt to use.

  cat README.md | llm -s "You are an emoji suggester"

• -a to attach images, audio, or videos to the prompt.

  llm "Which cat is this one?" -a "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Siam_lilacpoint.jpg"

• -o to pass some key value options to the model. The Gemini models options are code_execution and json_object.

  llm 'use python to sum the first 50 prime numbers' -o code_execution 1

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There are many more ways to use llm. I’ve written about some of them previously and am sure you’ll find some other interesting uses. Enjoy LLMing for free while it lasts!