Hey is a command-line-based AI pair programming assistant, designed to help developers interact with large language models (LLMs) through natural language to obtain programming-related answers and code snippets. It is described as an "AI-powered pair programming friend" and is provided for free.
Main capabilities: Hey supports connecting to any LLM service and is not limited to a specific provider. The official recommendation is to use the free token provided by MindsDB; users can generate a token for personal use for free on mdb.ai. Hey provides multiple commands and subcommands, which can be viewed through the --help flag.
How to use: Before installation, make sure the system has pip and Python 3.8 or higher installed. After installation, you need to set the token. For quick questions, you can use the ask subcommand, for example: hey ask "explain the duality term in quantum physics." If the question requires a more detailed explanation or includes code snippets, you can run hey directly, which will open the default editor (specified by the $EDITOR environment variable; if not set, Unix-like systems use vim by default, and Windows uses notepad by default). In addition, configuration commands are also provided: hey config create is used to create a basic configuration file, and hey config edit is used to view and edit the configuration file.
Use cases: Hey is suitable for developers to quickly obtain answers to programming questions, generate explanations of code snippets, and engage in pair-programming-style interaction in a terminal environment. Because it is CLI-based, it is suitable for users accustomed to command-line workflows.
Limitations: Hey's specific feature details, the list of supported LLM services, and explanations of configuration parameters are not fully expanded in the provided information. Its development background is the MindsDB X Hashnode hackathon project, and it uses the MIT license.
