Asher CLI

A Claude Code-style terminal dashboard for monitoring and controlling Litter Robot via the Whisker cloud API.

Features

• Live status bar — unit name, online/offline, drawer fill level, last activity, cat weight
• Human-readable robot status — translates raw API states into plain English (Ready, Cleaning, Cat Detected, Drawer Full, etc.)
• Real-time cycling indicator with elapsed time (⟳ Cycling M:SS)
• Fault & safety monitoring — model-scoped in-panel alerts for cat detected, pinch, motor/position/gas faults (LR5: bonnet/laser/drawer); press d to dismiss
• Cat panel with mode label + status badges (status chip, lock, night light, sleep, wait time) under the art
• Scrollable activity-history pager — history [count|all] opens a full-screen, paginated view (arrow keys, Page Up/Page Down, Home/End); q/Esc/Enter to close
• Commands: clean, status, info, lock, unlock, sleep, wake, night-light on|off|auto, night-light-brightness, wait-time, power on|off, rename, insight, sleep-schedule, plus LR5 extras (privacy, volume, camera-audio, drawer-reset), history [count|all], export [days|month], help, quit
• Slash commands for app management: /login, /logout, /robots, /robot <index|name>, /pets, /pet <index|name>, /cat on|off|colour <hex>, /refresh [seconds|off], /config, /version, /mcp on|off|status, /exit
• Slash-command tab completion — type / and a Claude Code-style overlay lists matching commands; ↑/↓ to move, Tab or Enter to accept, Esc to dismiss
• Inline ghost-text completion for bare commands — type a prefix (cle) and the rest (an) appears greyed; Tab or → to accept → clean
• Headless export — asher --export 7 writes activity history to CSV from cron / Task Scheduler / SSH without launching the TUI
• Cat animation panel that reacts to robot state
• Command history (↑/↓ arrows)
• Real-time updates via WebSocket; 5-minute poll fallback

Install

With pipx (recommended)

pipx install asher-cli
asher

pipx installs the CLI into an isolated environment and puts asher on your PATH automatically. Install pipx with pip install pipx if you don't have it.

With pip

pip install asher-cli
asher

With uv

uv tool install asher-cli
asher

Run from source

git clone https://github.com/karanshukla/asher-cli
cd asher-cli
uv sync
uv run asher

Credentials

On first run, type /login at the command prompt. Your credentials are saved to the OS keyring (Windows Credential Manager / macOS Keychain / Linux Secret Service) and reused automatically on subsequent runs.

To sign out: /logout

.env fallback (for CI or existing users):

LITTER_ROBOT_USER=[email protected]
LITTER_ROBOT_PASSWORD=yourpassword

Commands

Robot commands

Command	Description
clean	Start a clean cycle
status	Refresh and show what matters — online state, drawer level, last activity
info	Full dump of all robot properties (serial, firmware, all settings)
lock / unlock	Toggle panel lockout
sleep / wake	Toggle sleep mode
night-light on|off|auto	Set night light mode
night-light-brightness <level>	Set brightness (LR5: 0-100; LR4: 25/50/100)
wait-time <minutes>	Set clean-cycle wait time (shows valid values / current if omitted)
power on|off	Hard-power the unit on or off
rename <new name>	Rename the unit in the Whisker cloud
insight [days|month]	Show cycle-usage statistics (default: 30 days)
sleep-schedule	Show the per-day sleep schedule (read-only)
privacy on|off	Toggle LR5 privacy mode
volume <0-100>	Set LR5 sound volume
camera-audio on|off	Toggle LR5 camera audio
drawer-reset	Reset the LR5 waste drawer level indicator
history [count|all]	Show recent activity in a scrollable pager (default: 50 events)
export [days|month]	Export activity history to CSV in ~/Downloads (default: 30 days)
clear	Clear the log
help	Show command list
quit	Exit

Slash commands

Command	Description
/login	Sign in or switch accounts
/logout	Sign out and clear saved credentials
/robots	List all robots on the account
/robot <index|name>	Switch active robot (selection persists to keyring)
/pets	List all pets on the account
/pet <index|name>	Switch which pet's name/weight shows in the status bar
/cat on|off	Show or hide the cat animation panel
/cat colour <hex>	Change the cat art colour (e.g. /cat colour #ff79c6); color also accepted; /cat reset to revert
/refresh [seconds|off]	Change the auto-poll interval or disable it (/refresh 60, /refresh off)
/config	Show current runtime settings (robot, refresh rate, cat panel, active pet)
/version	Show version info (asher-cli, Python, pylitterbot, textual)
/mcp on|off|status	Toggle the Litter-Robot MCP server entry in Claude Desktop
/exit	Exit Asher CLI

Keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+L clears the log, Ctrl+C quits. While typing a / slash command, ↑/↓ move through completions, Tab or Enter accepts, Esc dismisses. While typing a bare command, a greyed ghost suggestion appears — Tab or → accepts it.

Headless export (cron / Task Scheduler / SSH)

--export writes the same CSV as the export command without launching the TUI — so you can script activity-history exports from cron, Windows Task Scheduler, or a server over SSH. No flags launches the interactive dashboard as before.

asher --export 7                         export last 7 days to ~/Downloads
asher --export 7 --output ~/hist.csv     explicit output path
asher --export month --robot "Asher 2"   30 days (Whisker ceiling) for a specific robot

--robot accepts an index or a partial, case-insensitive name (defaults to your saved preferred robot, else the first). Credentials use the same keyring → .env priority as the TUI, but with no interactive login prompt — a scheduled task can't type a password, so sign in once with /login first.

Exit codes for scripting:

Code	Meaning
0	export succeeded
1	no credentials found (keyring or .env)
2	connection or API failure
3	failed to write the CSV (permissions, disk full)
4	--robot matched no robot on the account

# crontab — nightly export at 03:00
0 3 * * * /usr/bin/env asher --export 7 --output /home/me/litter-history.csv >> /var/log/asher-export.log 2>&1

# Windows Task Scheduler action
asher.exe --export 7 --output C:\Users\me\litter-history.csv

Configuration

Runtime settings persist across restarts in ~/.asher-cli/config.json, so you don't have to re-apply /refresh 60, /cat color #ff79c6, or /pet 1 every launch. The file is auto-created on first change and holds four non-secret UI preferences:

Setting	Slash command	Default
poll_interval_seconds	/refresh <seconds|off>	300
cat_panel_visible	/cat on|off	true
cat_panel_color	/cat color <hex>|reset	null (default palette)
active_pet_index	/pet <index|name>	0

Credentials and the preferred-robot serial stay in the OS keyring; .env vars stay as env vars. You generally don't need to edit the file by hand — just use the slash commands — but it's plain JSON and safe to inspect or delete (deleting it restores defaults).

Releasing

# bump version, commit, and tag in one step, then push with tags
uv run bump-my-version bump patch    # 0.0.1 → 0.0.2
uv run bump-my-version bump minor    # 0.0.2 → 0.1.0
uv run bump-my-version bump major    # 0.1.0 → 1.0.0

git push && git push --tags

# then push the release branch to trigger PyPI publish with the new semver
git checkout -b release/0.0.2
git push origin release/0.0.2

Troubleshooting

asher not found after pip install asher-cli

Python's Scripts folder isn't on your PATH. Use pipx instead — it handles this automatically:

pip install pipx
pipx install asher-cli
asher

If you're in a virtualenv, deactivate it first:

deactivate
pip install pipx
pipx install asher-cli

pipx: command not found

Run it as a module instead:

python -m pip install pipx
python -m pipx install asher-cli

Dev Setup

1. Clone and install

git clone https://github.com/karanshukla/asher-cli
cd asher-cli
uv sync                                        # installs all deps including the dev group
git config core.hooksPath .githooks            # lint + type checks run before every push

2. Configure environment (optional)

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your credentials:

cp .env.example .env

LITTER_ROBOT_USER=[email protected]
LITTER_ROBOT_PASSWORD=yourpassword
ASHER_CLI_DEV_MODE=true    # sets version to "dev" instead of the installed package version

3. Run with hot reload

CSS hot reload — Textual's devtools watch inline CSS strings and .tcss files and reload them in-place without restarting:

uv run poe dev
# equivalent to: textual run --dev asher/__main__.py

Python auto-restart — true in-process reload isn't possible with Textual's event loop, but watchfiles will kill and relaunch the app whenever a .py file changes in asher/:

uv run poe watch
# equivalent to: watchfiles --filter python 'python -m asher' asher

You can combine both — run poe watch for Python changes and it will naturally pick up CSS changes too on restart.

4. Run tests

uv run poe test                  # run all tests
uv run pytest tests/ --cov=asher # with coverage report

5. Lint, format, type-check

uv run poe fix     # auto-fix ruff issues
uv run poe lint    # check only (no fixes)
uv run poe fmt     # check formatting
uv run poe types   # mypy
uv run poe check   # run all of the above + tests (same as CI)

CI runs on Python 3.10 / 3.11 / 3.12 across Ubuntu, Windows, and macOS on every push.

Changelog

Unreleased

• Config persistence — runtime settings (/refresh, /cat, /pet) now survive restarts via ~/.asher-cli/config.json. The file is auto-created on first change and holds four non-secret UI preferences; credentials stay in the keyring.

v0.2.0 — 2026-07-27

• Headless export — asher --export 7 writes activity history to CSV without launching the TUI, for cron / Task Scheduler / SSH. --output and --robot <index|name> flags select the destination and robot; documented exit codes for scripting.
• Activity-history pager — history now opens a full-screen, scrollable view instead of dumping into the main log. Page through long histories with the arrow keys / Page Up/Page Down / Home/End; q, Esc, or Enter closes it. Accepts an optional event count (history 100) or all (default: 50).

v0.1.1

• Token persistence — the OAuth session token is now saved to the keyring, so re-logins are skipped on subsequent launches.
• /version — new slash command showing asher-cli, Python, pylitterbot, and textual versions.
• Sleep-schedule viewer — new sleep-schedule command renders the per-day schedule (read-only).
• Cat panel badges — mode label plus status chips (status, lock, night light, sleep, wait time) under the cat art.
• Fault & safety monitoring — model-scoped, enum-aware detection with an in-panel banner; press d to dismiss.
• Cycling indicator — real-time elapsed timer (⟳ Cycling M:SS).

v0.1.0

• Readable status & history — robot status and activity events now render as plain English instead of raw enum values.
• Missing robot commands — added wait-time, power on|off, rename, insight, and split status (summary) from info (full property dump).
• LR5 extras — privacy, volume, camera-audio, and drawer-reset wired up via the robot adapter (gracefully refused on LR3/LR4).
• MCP bridge — keyring-backed pylitterbot[mcp] launcher with Claude Desktop config management (/mcp on|off|status).

Full history: see the commit log.

Notes

• Uses the unofficial pylitterbot library — supports LR3, LR4, LR5, and other Whisker robots
• The Whisker API is reverse-engineered and may change without notice
• Auth errors and network failures are shown in the UI with friendly messages