, 3 min read

Talk Python now has a CLI

TL;DR: Talk Python now has an open-source CLI tool (talk-python-cli) that lets you search 500+ podcast episodes, transcripts, guests, and training courses directly from your terminal. Install it with uv tool install talk-python-cli. It supports text, JSON, and markdown output: built for humans, scripts, and AI/LLMs alike.

Talk Python To Me has been running for over 10 years. Over that time, we have recorded an incredible amount of wisdom and history from the Python ecosystem. In fact, if you combine all our show notes, transcripts, and more, it totals over 7.5M words!

How do you access this knowledge? Well, there have been plenty of ways. Subscribe to the show for free, subscribe to the RSS feed, browse the site, use our lightning-fast custom search engine, or our new MCP server.

What is the Talk Python CLI?

Now there is one more: A Talk Python CLI too! Here is an example searching our entire catalog of episodes + transcripts for pyramid quart. That is, episodes discussing both frameworks. Because this is backed by our optimized APIs, response times for this request is only 5ms + Internet ping time. That is MUCH better than web scraping.

Why build a CLI tool?

I believe Talk Python becomes more valuable as it is used and referenced more by the community. The CLI tool closes an important gap. Here are just some examples:

  1. Terminal-first developers: “I live in my terminal, don’t make me open a browser to find that episode about FastAPI”
  2. Automation / scripting folks: “I want to pipe podcast data into my workflows and script it”
  3. AI / LLM builders: “I need real, high-quality Python community content for my RAG pipeline or podcast assistant”
  4. LLM Chat without MCP: “The MCP server solves the rapid access to live data challenge for AIs that support MCP and whose users has installed it. But many LLMs don’t support MCP. I’m looking at you ChatGPT.”

What can I ask?

The CLI has a subcommand-style API. For example talkpython guest or talkpython episodes. Above is an example of combining the commands to find what you really want to know.

  1. Was Hynek a guest? Yes, he was and he is known as guest #312.
  2. Now we can get details via talkpython guests get 312.

What output formats does the Talk Python CLI support?

I built the CLI with three consumers in mind. You can pass a --format flag with one of {'text', 'json', 'markdown'}.

  • Humans: text which uses Rich for beautifully formatted output.
  • Programs: json for piping from app to app.
  • AI/LLMs: markdown, weirdly Markdown is the preferred language for AIs like Claude Code.

What can the CLI do?

You can find all the commands described here on the GitHub readme. Oh yeah, and the CLI is open source so have a look here if you want to give feedback, suggest a PR, etc.

https://github.com/talkpython/talk-python-cli

How to install the Talk Python CLI

Installation is easy and probably best with uv as are many things these days.

# Install it permanently with uv
uv tool install talk-python-cli

Then you can try a few commands. For example, any of these:

# Search for episodes about FastAPI
talkpython episodes search "FastAPI"

# Get full details for a specific episode
talkpython episodes get 535

# Pull the transcript for an episode
talkpython episodes transcript 535

# List recent episodes
talkpython episodes recent --limit 5

# Search for a guest
talkpython guests search "Hynek"

# Browse all training courses
talkpython courses list

How to search Talk Python courses from the CLI

In addition to asking about the podcast, you can also ask questions about Talk Python courses.