Troubleshooting

zsh: no matches found: ...?

Cause: unquoted wildcard characters (?, *, [) in prompt text.

Fix:

ask --web "what day is it?"

If shell extension is installed for zsh, it may also wrap ask with noglob for convenience.

Unknown embedding model in llm embed-multi

Example:

Unknown model: sentence-transformers/all-MiniLM-L6-v2

Cause: embedding model/plugin alias not registered in your llm environment.

Checks:

llm embed-models
llm plugins

Use a model identifier available in your local llm installation or install the required embedding plugin/provider.

Unknown chat model in ask

Example:

Error: 'Unknown model: phi3:mini'

If run in an interactive terminal, ask now prompts:

Model 'phi3:mini' is not installed. Install it now? [Y/n]

On Y, it attempts local model setup (llm-ollama provider + ollama pull <model>), then retries. If setup still fails, verify:

llm plugins
ollama list

TTS not speaking

Check:

which piper
which aplay

Ensure the model path exists:

echo "$ASK_TTS_MODEL"

Or set it explicitly:

export ASK_TTS_MODEL="$HOME/.local/share/piper/en_US-lessac-medium.onnx"

ask command not found

• Open a new terminal session
• Ensure shell config has extension/source block
• Confirm install path is in PATH
• Re-run ./scripts/setup.sh to reinstall dependencies and shell wiring

llm is not installed or not on PATH

./scripts/setup.sh

Or dependency-only mode:

./scripts/setup.sh --dep-only

Web retrieval unavailable

• Verify selected provider dependencies
• Verify API keys for external providers if used