Command Line Tools ​

cheat.sh & eg are useful tools. Command Line Interface Guidelines are great.

nap & circumflex are nicely made CLIs written in Go & Bubble Tea (my preferred CLI stack).

There is also a nice curated CLI list

fzf is great tool.

Use ​

• ripgrep to search for text.
• fzf to fuzzy search through inputs.
• watchexec to rerun command when files of certain type change. Essential for fast feedback workflows. I usually have code on the left and terminal on right in VSCode. Use some fish functions for common commands.
• exa to replace ls as it has prettier output.
• bat to show contents of the file.
• jq to process/modify JSON.
• git for all version control.
• curl to do HTTP requests in terminal.
• yt-dlp to download videos.

Interesting ​

• rga - Ripgrep, but also search in PDFs, E-Books, Office documents, zip, tar.gz, etc. (Article) (HN)
• fd - Simple, fast and user-friendly alternative to 'find'.
• up - Deploy infinitely scalable serverless apps, APIs, and sites in seconds to AWS.
• tmux - Terminal multiplexer.
• direnv - Environment switcher for the shell.
• htop - Interactive text-mode process viewer for Unix systems.
• httpie - HTTP client.
• rq - Tool for doing record analysis and transformation.
• pandoc - Universal markup converter.
• trash - Move files and folders to the trash.
• vtop - Graphical activity monitor.
• gotop - Terminal based graphical activity monitor inspired by gtop and vtop.
• howdoi - Instant coding answers.
• asciinema - Terminal session recorder.
• tldr - Simplified and community-driven man pages.
• imgcat - Like cat but for images.
• screenfetch - Fetches system/theme information in terminal.
• hugo - Fast and flexible static site generator.
• reflex - Run a command when files change.
• modd - Flexible tool for responding to file system changes.
• now - Real time global deployments served over HTTP/2.
• yarn - Fast, reliable, and secure dependency management.
• hub - GitHub wrapper.
• xsv - Fast CSV command line toolkit written in Rust.
• pv - Pipe Viewer.
• m-cli - Useful utils for macOS.
• pgcli - Postgres CLI with autocompletion and syntax highlighting.
• mas - CLI for mac app store.
• loc - Count lines of code quickly.
• alfred - Manage Go-based Alfred workflows.
• neofetch - System information tool.
• license-up - Create a license quickly for your project.
• piknik - Copy/paste anything over the network.
• bench - Command-line benchmark tool.
• ghq - Manage remote repository clones.
• npx - Execute npm package binaries.
• devd - Local webserver for developers.
• wifi-password - Get the password of the WiFi you're on.
• fkill - Fabulously kill processes.
• ran - Simple static web server written in Go.
• mcfly - Fast visual command history search.
• hyperfine - Excellent command-line benchmarking tool.

Notes ​

• Look into gh cli for example of a well designed CLI. The -h is amazing.

Links ​

• Awesome command line tools
• Ask HN: What are your favorite terminal programs?
• What's an awesome Linux/Unix command that you wish someone had told you about earlier?
• Awesome Console Services
• tldr - Collection of simplified and community-driven man pages. (Web)
• Awesome jq - Curated list of awesome things built with the JSON processor and turing-complete functional language jq.
• cli.fan blog - Introduction.
• One Things Well blog - Weblog about simple, useful software.
• Terminals Are Sexy - Curated list of Terminal frameworks, plugins & resources for CLI lovers.
• Inconsolation - Adventures with lightweight and minimalist software for Linux.
• Arabesque - Systems, Tools, and Terminal Science.
• The Art of Command Line (HN)
• cheat - Allows you to create and view interactive cheatsheets on the command-line. (HN)
• hyperfine - Command-line benchmarking tool.
• An Illustrated Guide to Useful Command Line Tools (2019) (Lobsters) (HN)
• uutils coreutils - Coreutils Rewritten in Rust. (HN)
• The Language Agnostic, All-Purpose, Incredible, Makefile (2019) (Lobsters) (HN)
• CLI: improved (2018)
• Awesome CLI apps
• Fast Searching with ripgrep (2020)
• Awk in 20 Minutes (HN)
• Grep for System Admins: Using Grep to Automate Daily Tasks (2020)
• Command line interfaces are reified UIs (2017) (HN) (Lobsters)
• My Favorite CLI Tools (2020) (HN)
• wttr.in - Console-oriented weather forecast service. (HN)
• Structured text tools - List of text-based file formats and command line tools for manipulating each.
• Conventions for Command Line Options (2020) (HN)
• Rewritten in Rust: Modern Alternatives of Command-Line Tools (2020) (Lobsters)
• Search and replace tricks with ripgrep (2020) (Lobsters)
• What are your favorite non-standard CLI utils/applications (2020)
• cheat.sh - Unified access to the best community driven cheat sheets. Available via CLI. (Web)
• My growing list of Rust programs to use (Lobsters)
• dasel - Allows you to query and modify data structures using selector strings.
• You Don't Need GUI - CLI commands as alternatives to GUI. (HN)
• CLI Guidelines - Guide to help you write better command-line programs, taking traditional UNIX principles and updating them for the modern day. (Code) (HN) (Lobsters)
• nq - Utils for creating lightweight job queue systems. (HN)
• Building Rich Terminal Dashboards (2021) (HN)
• frawk - JITted and SIMD-optimized AWK written in Rust. (Lobsters) (HN)
• How to Handle Secrets on the Command Line (2021) (HN)
• Modern Unix - Collection of modern/faster/saner alternatives to common unix commands.
• Awesome TUIs - List of projects that provide terminal user interfaces.
• Lobsters: What interesting command line tools do you use? (2021)
• binenv - One binary to rule them all. Manage all those pesky binaries (kubectl, helm, terraform, ...) easily.
• Command line tools for productive programmers (2021) (HN)
• Writing Programs with Ncurses (HN)
• Awk: The Power and Promise of a 40-Year-Old Language (2021) (HN)
• buke - Full text search man pages.
• Renamer - Rename files in bulk.
• CLI Testing Tool - Testing library that allows you to test input and outputs of your CLI command.
• bvm - Binary Version Manager.
• command-not-found.com - Install any command on any operating system.
• mdbook-man - Generate man pages from mdBooks.
• Powerful Terminal And Command-Line (CLI) Tools For Modern Web Development (2021)
• GoAWK - AWK interpreter written in Go. (Article)
• htop - Cross-platform interactive process viewer. (Web)
• hgrep - Grep with human-friendly search results.
• Ask HN: What are the best and worst command-line interfaces you have used? (2021)
• Command Line Magic Twitter (Web)
• Tips on adding JSON output to your CLI app (2021) (HN)
• Why and How to add changelog in your next CLI (2021)
• A practical overview of most useful Unix tools (2021) (HN)
• fq - jq for binary formats. (HN) (HN)
• termshot - Creates screenshots based on terminal command output.
• aqua - CLI tool to install CLI tools with declarative YAML configuration. (Docs)
• Supreme - Add configurations, GitHub actions and get started quickly with new projects.
• Bina - Installer for self-contained, single-file binaries, no additional CLI needed. (Code)
• Nice CLIs
• Charm - Tools to make the command line glamorous. (HN)
• Quick reference on command line tools and techniques
• Grep flags – the good stuff (HN)
• SnipKit - Snippet CLI manager for quickly accessing code snippets without leaving the terminal.
• pz - Easily handle CLI operation via Python instead of regular Bash programs. (HN)
• Scaffolder - Increasing dev velocity and standardizing file conventions.
• crispr - CLI tool allowing to scaffold a project from a template with a .crispr.{toml,json} configuration file.
• envy - Sets environment variables when you enter a directory.
• timer - sleep with progress.
• hwatch - Modern alternative to the watch command, records the differences in execution results and can check this differences at after.
• lets-run - Run a command when a certain file exists, and/or watch files to rerun on changes.
• eg - Useful examples at the command line.
• zf - Command line fuzzy finder that prioritizes matches on filenames.
• NO_COLOR - Disabling ANSI color output in various Unix commands. (HN)
• igrep - Interactive Grep.
• Argc - Handy way to handle sh/bash cli parameters.
• qsv - Ultra-fast CSV data-wrangling CLI toolkit.
• More Than a Dozen Command Line Tools I've Written—and So Can You (2018)
• Track changes to CLI tools by recording their help output (HN)
• Scout - Friendly fuzzy finder made in rust.
• fzf - Fommand-line fuzzy finder. (HN)
• Making the command line glamorous with Toby Padilla (2022)
• septum - Context-based code search tool.
• has - Checks presence of various command line tools and their versions on the path.
• Fig Manual Pages - Beautiful, community-driven documentation for 300+ CLI tools.
• csvlens - CSV file viewer in the command line.
• Difftastic - Diff tool that compares files based on their syntax. (HN) (Article) (HN) (Lobsters)
• Goreman - Manage Procfile-based applications.
• Testing your CLI - Go package simplifies testing of command-line interfaces.
• Periscope - Gives you "duplicate vision" to help you organize and de-duplicate your files without losing data.
• Wiki CLI - View Wikipedia articles through the CLI.
• tush - Literate testing for command-line programs.
• -h --help -help help --? -? ???? (2022) (Lobsters) (HN)
• New(ish) command line tools (2022) (HN)
• ff - Find files by name, fast.
• cexec - Run commands and cache their output for a specific amount of time.
• Hoard - CLI command organizer written in rust.
• A Simple Ejectable CLI Pattern (2022)
• rush - Command-line utility that lets you run one command on many files using a simple command template syntax.
• mprocs - Runs multiple commands in parallel and shows output of each command separately.
• CLET - Command Line E2E Testing.
• climod - Modular generated command line interfaces using the same technology as the NixOS module system.
• The sort --key Trick
• UX patterns for CLI tools (2022) (Lobsters)
• forever - Simple CLI tool for ensuring that a given script runs continuously (i.e. forever).
• Best practices for inclusive CLIs (2022) (Lobsters) (HN)
• tuc - When cut doesn’t cut it. (HN)
• linebyline - Command line text processor.
• Viddy - Modern watch command. Time machine and pager etc. (HN)
• cronlocker - Command line tool to allow running cronjobs on multiple hosts while ensuring that it only runs once at a time.
• pipe-rename - Rename your files using your favorite text editor.
• Backpack - Use template and starter projects easily.
• tere - Faster Alternative to cd+ls. (HN)
• bin - Manages binary files downloaded from different sources.
• catp - Print the output of a running process.
• lurk - Simple and pretty alternative to strace. Allows the user to trace system calls of a process or of a command.
• wrappe - Packer to create self-contained single-binary applications from executables and directory trees.
• Gum - Tool for glamorous shell scripts. Leverage the power of Bubbles and Lip Gloss in your scripts and aliases without writing any Go code. (Lobsters) (HN)
• Things I've learned building a modern TUI framework (2022) (HN)
• trashy - Simple, fast, and featureful alternative to rm and trash-cli written in rust.
• procmon - Simple utility for checking if processes are running.
• Marian Montagnino - Reinventing the CLI with Go (2022)
• Awesome list of CLI/TUI programs
• goldplate - Cute and simple golden test runner for CLI applications.
• CLI Testing Library - Simple and complete CLI testing utilities that encourage good testing practices.
• run-pty - Run several commands concurrently. Show output for one command at a time. Kill all at once.
• headtail - Head and tail simultaneously.
• enquirer - Command Line Utility for Stylish Interactive Prompts.
• Your favorite Rust CLI utilities this year (2022)
• pipebuffer - Simple command line program for buffering stdin/stdout between piped processes.
• zig-dwarfdump - dwarfdump utility but in Zig.
• Bevel - Command line history in an SQLite database for effective re-use.
• alt - Simple version manager. Tool for switching between different versions of commands.
• Charm VHS - Write terminal GIFs as code for integration testing and demoing your CLI tools.
• JC - JSONifies the output of many CLI tools. (HN)
• Command-line data analytics made easy (2022)
• CLI Tools Are Not Inherently User-Hostile - Mindy Preston (2022)
• How stdbuf works (2022) (HN)
• keyb - Create and view your custom hotkey cheat sheet with TUI.
• GPT3 Powered CLI - Get answers for CLI commands from GPT3 right from your terminal.
• Nap - Code snippets in your terminal.
• chimp - Tooling that helps you do quality, faster.
• llama - Terminal file manager.
• moar - Pager. It reads and displays UTF-8 encoded text from files or pipelines.
• Terminal CoPilot - Smart terminal assistant that helps you find the right command.
• Copilot, for your terminal - CLI tool that generates shell scripts from a human readable description.
• How we improved productivity with an internal CLI (2022)
• Awesome CLI - Curated list of things related with Command Line Interfaces.
• DidYouMean - CLI spelling corrector for when you're unsure.
• fre - Command line frecency tracking.
• rsms-utils - Collection of CLI programs to help with everyday computer life. (HN)
• shelltestrunner - Easy, repeatable testing of CLI programs/commands.
• Catimg - Renders images in the terminal.
• Just - Command Runner. (HN)
• felix - TUI file manager with Vim-like key mapping, written in Rust.
• Rmt - Similar to the rm command but saves the deleted elements in the trash and restores them.
• Commands.dev - Find commands at the speed of thought. (Code)
• sudo at home (HN)
• CSView - Simple CSV viewer/editor.
• Flagon - Feature Flags from your CLI.
• Solitaire TUI - Klondike solitaire for the terminal. Built with Bubble Tea Go.
• gotop - Terminal based graphical activity monitor inspired by gtop and vtop.
• Erdtree - Multi-threaded file-tree visualizer and disk usage analyzer.
• clipboard - Better command line clipboard.
• xdg-ninja - Shell script which checks your $HOME for unwanted files and directories.
• greple - Extensible grep with lexical expression and region handling.
• WIKI-TUI - Simple and easy to use Wikipedia Text User Interface.
• GTop - Alternative to top or htop made in Go.
• Teleport - Lightning-fast tool to quickly switch between repositories.
• Building CLI with Bubble Tea and Lip Gloss
• halp - CLI tool to get help with CLI tools.
• WIK - Terminal Based Wikipedia. (HN)
• teip - Masking tape to help commands "do one thing well".
• gotrash - rm alternative written in Go.
• JSCodemod - Codemod runner.
• textra - Command-line application to convert images, PDFs, and audio files to text using Apple's APIs.
• Curated list of command-line utilities written in Rust
• gat - cat alternative written in Go.
• sttr - Cross-platform, cli app to perform various operations on string.
• demo - Framework for performing live pre-recorded command line demos.
• killport - Command-line tool to easily kill processes running on a specified port. (HN)
• sudo-rs - Memory safe implementation of sudo and su. (Article) (HN)
• hunt - Simplified Find command made with Rust.
• script-runner - Simple threaded CLI script runner.
• jr - Quality Random Data from the Command line.
• re - Command Line Tool to execute commands in readme.
• gret - Command line tool that searches a directory or file for a matching regex expression and displays matches in a tree structure.
• spacer - CLI tool to insert spacers in command output to provide visual markers of when things happened.
• pic - Preview Image in CLI.
• repgrep - Interactive replacer for ripgrep that makes it easy to find and replace across files on the command line.
• macOS command-line tools you might not know about (2023) (HN)
• The Awk Programming Language, Second Edition (HN)
• gping - Ping, but with a graph.
• projectable - TUI file manager built for projects.
• stdrename - Rename all files in a folder according to a specified naming convention.
• renamer - Rename files with patterns.
• What helps people get comfortable on the command line? (2023) (Tweet) (Lobsters)
• pick - Fuzzy search tool for the command-line.
• walk - Terminal file manager. (HN)
• eza - Modern, maintained replacement for ls.
• What Makes A Good Cli Tool | Prime Explains (2023)
• Rust-Traverse - Terminal based file explorer.
• Replicate CLI
• pi - Project templates in rust.
• Pingrep - Command-line tool designed to quickly and easily search through your Pinboard bookmarks locally.