Amazon Q CLI: My experience

Introduction:

Amazon Q is generative AI assistant specialized for Software Developers, Q CLI specially is a command line tool coding assistant that Integrates Amazon AI coding assistant to your local dev setup.

From time to time, I like to explore different AI agents out of curiosity whether it's to test their capabilities, understand how they integrate into developer workflows, or simply to see how they compare with one another, So I tried Amazon Q, and this is my experience, from installation and setup to real-world usage in my development workflow. Here's what stood out, what fell short, and whether I think it's worth adopting as a daily tool.

Installing Q CLI:

Q CLI installation is straightforward, you can refer to AWS official documentation.

Authentication was surprisingly smooth and quick. Unlike many other AWS services that often involve manually setting up credentials or roles, here you just sign in using your AWS Builder ID through a browser prompt, and you’re good to go. No need to touch config files or generate keys, which is a welcome change.

First impression:

At first glance, Q CLI felt familiar, its interface reminded me of tools like Claude’s code assistant and Gemini CLI.
The overall experience of typing natural language prompts into the terminal and getting contextual, code-aware responses gave me that same vibe. If you've experimented with those tools, you'll likely feel right at home with Q CLI’s conversational design.

Q CLI Features:

1. Autocomplete & Inline Suggestions

• Offers graphical autocomplete dropdowns (e.g., pressing Tab shows relevant options for commands like git, aws, docker)

• Provides ghost-text inline suggestions that you can accept via Tab or →

• Works across popular 500+ CLI tools in bash, zsh, fish on macOS and Ubuntu

2. Natural-Language Chat (q chat)

• Launch an interactive chat session right within your terminal

• Supports conversation persistence with:

  • q chat --resume

  • /save, /load for storing and retrieving conversation context

3. Command Translation (q translate)

My most favorite feature, it converts natural-language prompts into shell commands, e.g.:

q translate "check all inactive docker containers"

4. Agentic CLI Mode

• The enhanced CLI now acts as an agent capable of:

  • Reading/writing files

  • Executing shell commands

  • Interacting with AWS resources

  • Scaffolding projects end-to-end (like bootstrapping a React/Vite app and running it)

• Powered by Claude 4

5. Final Thoughts

Would I recommend it?
Yes,
It’s a solid productivity booster for backend devs, infra engineers, or anyone who works with the CLI on a daily basis.