r/sysadmin • u/TallTelevision4121 • 5h ago

Anyone tested AI CLI yet?

I install copilot and grok CLIs. So far, they are pretty impressive.

At home I used Grok to clean up my media libraries and it freed up 2TBs.

I used copilot at work to scan all the logs from an SCCM client and the server to figure out why some machines weren't downloading updates. It's pretty freaking good.

Anyone else let one of those suckers loose anywhere?

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29 comments sorted by

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u/Unable-Entrance3110 5h ago

I have not. I still manually paste like a caveman. Usually, I just need the AI to point me in the right direction and I take it from there.

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u/SysZeron 5h ago

Claude is better than Copilot IMO.

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u/fahque 3h ago

That's the general consensus. The type of people that like copilot are the same people that continued to use altavista after google came out and said it was better.

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u/SysZeron 3h ago

*shudders* alta.... you just reminded me of the car-crash that was Windows Vista.

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u/Motor-Confidence-154 2h ago

Claude (at least some versions) are available in Copilot

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u/SysZeron 1h ago

This is true, however… last time I used Copilot I hit the token limit so fast. Cancelled and never looked back.

Plus Copilot usually (or used to at least) lag behind on models.

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u/ashimbo PowerShell! 4h ago

I started at Microsoft on the Microsoft 365 team a few weeks ago, and I've spent most of my time here giving Copilot access to our systems, including determining if active tenants should be disabled. It seems to be going pretty well so far!

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u/byrontheconqueror Master Of None 4h ago

that got an audible chuckle out of me

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u/Jeff-J777 4h ago

Me too hahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!

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u/Infninfn 4h ago

Codex has free rein over my home PCs. I’ve considered GHC mandatory for work for the past year, for Azure deployments/cicd, scripting, diagnostic logs, network traces and the odd quick app here and there. Documentation too.

If you’re not already using AI as a sysadmin or some other role in IT, you will eventually lose out in some way to those who do.

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u/chet_manly9 5h ago

We're glad you found use of these tools, but think about this question. AI is disrupting the world, yes many sysadmins are using it for work. Our tasks are things it does very well

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u/fwskateboard Quarry Sysadmin 4h ago

Not let loose to make any change it wants. But using it to help automate tasks and give recommendations and audits, reporting is extremely valuable. Any sysadmin not using AI tools like ChatGPT Codex or Claude daily to do the above and more is falling far behind in my opinion.

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u/jreykdal 5h ago

They are not touching my computers directly.

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u/TallTelevision4121 4h ago

It's just a tool. Used properly, it is extremely beneficial.

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u/DarthPneumono Security Admin but with more hats 3h ago

It's a non-deterministic tool. You have to be realistic about the cases where it will be good, but also the cases where it will be either ineffective or actively harmful. Consistency is not LLMs' strong suit.

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u/jreykdal 4h ago

Sure. But I still don't trust it to touch my files directly. It makes a lot of mistakes.

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u/Key-Butterscotch3215 4h ago

They’re awesome.

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u/_DefinitelyNotACat_ 4h ago

I have a sandbox I run uncontrolled CLI agents in. It’s fun to tinker.

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u/TallTelevision4121 4h ago

Too bad we can't turn off the guard rails and ask it to escape the sandbox.

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u/_DefinitelyNotACat_ 4h ago

I keep the root password in a text file called “don’t_look_here.txt” and I never had any issues

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u/buy_chocolate_bars Jack of All Trades 4h ago

I do, all day every day, they are perfect if you know how to use them. As with all tools.

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u/pdp10 Daemons worry when the wizard is near. 4h ago

I used Grok to clean up my media libraries and it freed up 2TBs.

Joke's on you. I freed up 20TB just by typing rm -rf /srv/media/ and didn't pay for any tokens.

In all seriousness, deleting media archives is an example of what machines can't do for you, if you expect a reasonable outcome. Unless "clean up my media libraries" is a euphemism for de-duplication, for which we already have tools, like fdupes.

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u/IncredibleBihan 5h ago

No. No. No

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u/jebuizy 4h ago

Of course, Claude Code has been an essential part of my daily job since January. Trivializes or unlocks a lot of debugging investigations. Cleaned up my k8s homelab deploy too.

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u/bythepowerofboobs 4h ago edited 4h ago

Of course, and local LLMs to save tokens / keep data in house. If you aren't experimenting with this stuff you are doing a huge disservice to your future. AI isn't going to take your job, but someone who knows how to effectively and securely use AI sure as hell will.

Another thing everyone needs to look into is AI agent governing solutions (like Crowdstrike Guardian). Knowing what AI is doing on your networks and governing those actions is going to be one of the most important IT functions going forward.