Amazon Q Developer CLI brings AWS's AI assistant into the terminal itself, rather than only into an IDE. It provides contextual autocompletion for common CLI tools like git, npm, docker, and the AWS CLI, a natural-language chat interface through q chat, and a translation feature, q translate, that converts plain English descriptions directly into shell commands.
Its more advanced capabilities, reading and writing local files, querying AWS resources, and running local tools, are powered by Amazon Bedrock using models like Claude 3.7 Sonnet, enabling multi-turn conversations that carry real context about a project rather than treating each command as an isolated request. With permission, it can resolve merge conflicts directly, acting with more autonomy than a typical autocomplete tool.
It installs on macOS through a DMG or Homebrew, on desktop Linux through an AppImage or .deb package, and on headless Linux through downloadable binaries, authenticating via AWS Builder ID or IAM Identity Center. It's a natural complement to Amazon Q Developer's IDE integration for developers who spend significant time in a terminal working with AWS infrastructure.