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The Rubber Duck CLI (duck) is a voice-first coding companion that runs as a local daemon. It manages Pi RPC sessions per workspace and streams events over a Unix domain socket.

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Installation

Install globally via npm: 
npm install -g rubber-duck
Or run without installing: 
npx rubber-duck --help

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macOS App Integration

If you’re using the Rubber Duck menu bar app on macOS, the CLI binary is automatically installed on first launch:
  • Downloaded from GitHub Releases to ~/Library/Application Support/RubberDuck/duck
  • Symlinked to /usr/local/bin/duck
  • Auto-updated when the app version changes

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Basic Usage

The CLI provides four core commands: 
duck [path]        # Attach to workspace and stream live events
duck say <message> # Send a prompt to the active session
duck sessions      # List all sessions with status
duck doctor        # Check system health and dependencies

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Quick Start

Attach to your current workspace: 
duck .
In another terminal, send commands: 
duck say "run tests and summarize failures only"
duck say "refactor the authentication logic"
List active sessions: 
duck sessions --all
Check system health: 
duck doctor

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Requirements

  • Node.js: Version 22 or higher
  • Pi binary: Resolved in this order:
    1. RUBBER_DUCK_PI_BINARY environment variable
    2. Local cli/node_modules/.bin/pi
    3. pi from system PATH

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Environment Variables

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RUBBER_DUCK_PI_MODEL
string
default:"gpt-4o-mini"
Override the default AI model for Pi sessions. Examples: gpt-4o, claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022
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RUBBER_DUCK_PI_THINKING
string
default:"off"
Control thinking verbosity level. Options: off, minimal, low, medium, high, xhigh
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RUBBER_DUCK_PI_BINARY
string
Explicit path to the Pi binary executable
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NO_COLOR
boolean
Disable colored terminal output when set to any value

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Next Steps

Command Reference

Complete reference for all CLI commands and options

Output Format

Learn about event streaming and JSON mode

Daemon Architecture

Understand the daemon process and runtime files

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