A 4.4BSD.dev project
Welcome to the Robert repository.
Robert is a terminal-based application that provides expert knowledge about FreeBSD through a set of tools that allow an LLM to read local man pages and other official FreeBSD documentation such as the user and developer handbooks.
It is available as a public SSH service so you can run it even when you don't have access to a FreeBSD machine. All of the answers provided by Robert are based on official sources that are accessed on a live FreeBSD system.
Robert is particularly good when you need to troubleshoot a problem and is just as good if you want to spend some time learning about FreeBSD through an interactive session.
Accessible via SSH:
ssh robert@4.4bsd.dev1. Download the latest release
fetch https://github.com/llmrb/robert/releases/download/v0.12.1/robert
chmod +x robert2. Set your DeepSeek API key
export DEEPSEEK_SECRET="sk-..."3. Run it
./robertPre-built static binaries for FreeBSD 15-STABLE and 16-CURRENT can be
downloaded from GitHub Releases.
Each tagged release publishes a robert binary; the latest release is
v0.12.1.
Why is Robert better than ChatGPT?
Robert connects an LLM to official, authoritative FreeBSD documentation
and nothing else. Every answer comes from manual pages, the handbook,
or the ports tree, accessed live through tools like man,
apropos, and full-text handbook search.
The system prompt strongly encourages the model to only use information from those tools, and every tool is connected to FreeBSD documentation. This means the chances of outdated information or hallucinated commands are greatly reduced.
Robert is designed to answer FreeBSD questions and only FreeBSD questions, using FreeBSD documentation and only FreeBSD documentation. That's what sets it apart. It is optimized for FreeBSD.
Can I use a different model?
The releases use DeepSeek, but Robert is built on mruby-llm, which supports OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Mistral, and others. Rebuild with any provider mruby-llm supports.
Can I run it outside FreeBSD?
The pre-built binaries target FreeBSD, but mruby-llm is cross-platform. Robert can be built for Linux, macOS, and OpenBSD. The ports tree and package tools are FreeBSD-specific; the core chat and man-page tooling are not.
If you want to learn more about the runtime that powers Robert, check out mruby-llm. The same API is also available on CRuby via llm.rb.
0BSD.
See LICENSE.