AI Shell Preview 4 Is here: Better macOS support, and more!

We’re excited to share the latest preview release of AI Shell that includes new features and improvements based on your feedback. This release focuses on improving the user experience by improving access to Azure OpenAI deployments, improvements to the Invoke-AIShell command, and expanded compatibility with macOS.

MacOS support improvements

We’ve made significant improvements to the macOS side car experience with iTerm2. Previously, the side car experience was unreliable and didn’t support the /code post command. Now you have a more reliable experience with feature parity with your experience on Windows. For this experience you need to run PowerShell 7 in iTerm2. For more information about PowerShell 7 on macOS, see Installing PowerShell on macOS.

Support for Microsoft Entra ID

To keep password and keys secure, we’ve added support for Entra ID authentication to to Azure OpenAI instances. Now you can access your Azure OpenAI resource without storing keys in the configuration file. The following example shows how to configure Entra ID authentication:

{
  // Declare GPT instances.
  "GPTs": [
      // Declaration of an Azure OpenAI instance with EntraID authentication
      {
        "Name": "ps-az-entraId",
        "Description": "A GPT instance with expertise in PowerShell scripting using Entra ID authentication.",
        "Endpoint": "<Your Endpoint>",
        "Deployment": "<Your Deployment Name>",
        "ModelName": "<Your Model Name>",
        "AuthType": "EntraID",
        "SystemPrompt": "You are a helpful and friendly assistant with expertise in PowerShell scripting and command line."
      }
  ],

  // Specify the default GPT instance to use for user query.
  "Active": "ps-az-entraId"
}

This is the hierarchy of credentials that AI Shell will use to authenticate to Azure OpenAI:

• EnvironmentCredential
• WorkloadIdentityCredential
• ManagedIdentityCredential
• SharedTokenCacheCredential
• VisualStudioCredential
• AzureCliCredential
• AzurePowerShellCredential
• AzureDeveloperCliCredential
• InteractiveBrowserCredential

For more information on what these particular credentials are, please see the DefaultAzureCredential reference.

Invoke-AIShell command additions

We’ve added additional parameters to the Invoke-AIShell command to allow for easier use of the side pane without leaving the left side of the screen.

• -PostCode – This parameter allows you to post code generated from the side pane to the connected PowerShell session. It reduces the need to switch between the side pane and terminal to run the /code post command.
• -CopyCode – This parameter allows you to copy code from the side pane without using the /code copy command.
• -Exit – This parameter allows you to exit the side pane without using the /exit command.

These new parameters allow you to use your terminal normally. You can inject AI generated commands without cluttering your main buffer and keep all the details and descriptions in the side pane. This is a great way to use AI Shell as side by side shell assistant! Coupled with PSReadLine Predictive IntelliSense, you can quickly and easily use AI Shell in your normal shell workflow.

Phi Silica agent

We’ve added a new experimental agent called Phi Silica. This agent uses the built-in Phi Silica model included with the latest Copilot+ PCs, allowing you to have an offline experience with AI Shell.

This experimental AI provider is a proof of concept that’s still under development. You should only use it for testing. Expect breaking changes in future releases.

Additional minor improvements

Here are a few additional improvements that have been made in this release:

• Updated model information to support latest OpenAI models (#368)
• Add /clear as an alias to the command /cls to clear console in AIShell (#370)
• Update installation script to install the AIShell module on macOS too (#374)
• Enhanced model management and system prompt integration in OllamaAgent (#351) (Thanks @cnupy!)

To see the full list of changes, check out the changelog in the release page.

How to install AI Shell Preview 4

To install the latest version of AI Shell, run the following command in your PowerShell terminal:

Invoke-Expression "& { $(Invoke-RestMethod 'https://aka.ms/install-aishell.ps1') }"

As usual we would love for you to try AI Shell and provide feedback in our GitHub repository.

Thanks so much!

AI Shell Team

Steven Bucher & Dongbo Wang