Quickstart

1. Generate one continuation

basemode "Once upon a time there was a" -m gpt-4o-mini -M 200

basemode prints your prefix dimmed, then streams continuation tokens.

2. Generate parallel branches

basemode "Once upon a time there was a" -n 3

This opens a live panel and streams all branches concurrently.

3. Inspect strategy behavior

basemode "Once upon a time" --show-strategy
basemode strategies
basemode info claude-sonnet-4-6

4. Find the best strategy for a model

basemode bench claude-opus-5 --samples
basemode bench claude-opus-5 --save

bench runs each coercion strategy against the model, scores how cleanly each one continues text, and can pin the winner. See Strategies.

5. Save your default model

basemode default claude-sonnet-4-6
basemode default

You can now omit --model.

6. Pipe text from stdin

cat chapter1.txt | basemode --model groq/llama-3.3-70b-versatile

7. Ask a normal question

Not everything is a continuation. ask gets a plain chat answer from any model basemode can reach:

basemode ask "why is the sky blue?"
git diff | basemode ask "write a commit message" -m claude-haiku-4-5

See CLI Reference for all commands and options.