CLI Tools & Terminal Productivity

Single-file reference for modern CLI tooling, terminal workflow design, installation rules, and maintenance scripts.

System Principles (NON-NEGOTIABLE RULES)

Installation Architecture

System tools → apt (base OS utilities, stable packages)
Official sources → Docker, Cloudflare, Kubernetes, Tailscale, etc. (vendor-managed repos)
mise → development tool runtime manager (installed via official APT repo)
Developer CLI tools → installed via mise use -g <tool>

XDG Base Directory Specification

export XDG_CONFIG_HOME="$HOME/.config" export XDG_DATA_HOME="$HOME/.local/share" export XDG_STATE_HOME="$HOME/.local/state" export XDG_CACHE_HOME="$HOME/.cache"

1. CORE CLI KIT (DAILY USE)

fastfetch
htop
fzf (television is also must checkout with some config or default) fd
sd
ripgrep (rg)
duf
dust ncdu age eza
jq
yq
zoxide
yazi
bat
xh
curlie (optional, curl & xh works) tldr
delta (optional, hunk alternative if needed) lazygit lazydocker (if needed) zip (ouch a single alternative for all types) unzip

2. EXPERIMENTAL / EVALUATION TOOLS

Still to Review

chezmoi (dotfile manager with templating) viddy (modern watch replacement)
broot (interactive tree navigation alternative)
jless (JSON viewer)
logdy (log streaming UI)
act (run GitHub Actions locally)
trippy (traceroute + ping TUI)

sshs (tui for ssh configs) atac (posting rust alternative for api testing)

Done Reviewing

zellij (tmux alternative, modern terminal multiplexer)
stow (dotfile symlinks) television (fuzzy finder TUI alternative to fzf in some workflows)
gdu (fast disk usage analyzer)
age (modern encryption tool replacing gpg use cases in simple flows) herdr (agent/AI terminal multiplexer concept tool)
vimium (browser keyboard navigation extension)
shortcat (OS-level keyboard navigation tool)
direnv (auto-load env per directory)
dotenvx (secure env file management with encryption) sesh (session manager for terminals)
sessionx (session management tooling)

3. TERMINAL & SHELL ECOSYSTEM

Terminal Emulators

wezterm (GPU-accelerated, highly configurable)
ghostty (modern fast terminal emulator)
Windows Terminal (Microsoft multiplexer terminal UI)
alacritty (minimal GPU terminal)
kitty (feature-rich GPU terminal)

Shells

bash (default POSIX-compatible shell)
zsh (feature-rich interactive shell)
fish (user-friendly shell with autosuggestions)
nushell (structured data shell)
pwsh (PowerShell cross-platform shell)

Fonts

JetBrains Mono Nerd Font (current primary choice)
Hack Nerd Font
Fira Code Nerd Font

Prompt Engine

starship (cross-shell prompt with git + context awareness)

4. NAVIGATION & FILE DISCOVERY

zoxide (smart directory jumping, learns usage patterns)
fd (fast file search, simpler than find, respects .gitignore)
ripgrep / rg (fast recursive search engine, grep replacement)
eza (modern ls replacement with icons, git status, tree view)

5. FUZZY FINDING & PREVIEW SYSTEM

fzf (universal fuzzy finder for files, history, git, processes)
bat (syntax highlighted file viewer, used for previews in fzf)

Key concept: pipe-anything → interactive selection → return result to shell

6. HISTORY & COMPLETION SYSTEM

PSReadLine (PowerShell history + Ctrl+R search)
fzf history search (interactive shell history filtering)
atuin (optional: persistent distributed shell history database)
carapace (unified completion engine across CLI tools) (for unsupported tools generate bash-completion scripts or use bridge for pwsh)

7. GIT & VERSION CONTROL TOOLING

lazygit (interactive git UI for staging, commits, branches)
gitui (alternative git TUI)
delta (syntax-highlighted diff viewer replacing plain diff)
hunk (experimental diff viewer / patch explorer)

8. SYSTEM MONITORING & ANALYSIS

htop (classic process viewer)
btop (modern enhanced system monitor)
procs (modern ps replacement with readable output)
duf (modern df replacement for disks)
dust (modern du replacement for directory sizes)
dozzle (real-time Docker log viewer UI)

9. NETWORKING & API TOOLS

xh (HTTP client, curl alternative with better UX)
curlie (curl with HTTPie-style usability)
posting (Postman-like terminal API client)
doggo (DNS lookup tool)
bandwhich (per-process network bandwidth monitor)
tailscale (mesh VPN overlay network)
netbird (alternative mesh VPN with routing + UI features)
trippy (network diagnostics: traceroute + ping combined TUI)

10. DEVOPS & CLOUD TOOLING

docker + lazydocker (container management + UI)
kubectl + k9s (Kubernetes CLI + terminal dashboard)
aws CLI / azure CLI / gcloud CLI (cloud resource management)
terraform (infrastructure as code)
cloudflared (Cloudflare tunnel agent)
dive (inspect docker image layers)
gh (GitHub CLI)
skopeo (container image inspection without pulling)

11. PRODUCTIVITY & AUTOMATION

direnv (auto environment loading per directory)
dotenvx (secure env file encryption + management)
sd (modern sed replacement for find/replace)
tldr / tealdeer (simplified command help pages)
pueue (background task queue system)
miniserve (quick HTTP file server)
espanso (text expansion system across OS)

12. INSTALLATION MANIFESTS

System Tools (APT baseline)

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y \
git curl wget tmux htop bash-completion rsync \
zip unzip tar xz-utils \
build-essential ca-certificates gnupg \
less man-db manpages \
dnsutils lsof strace \
file procps iproute2 iputils-ping \
ncdu

optional tools

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y \
mtr-tiny \
pciutils usbutils \
software-properties-common

Official Repository Tools

Docker
mise
Tailscale / Netbird
Cloudflared
Kubernetes (kubectl)

mise global tools

mise use -g \
fzf fd ripgrep bat eza zoxide neovim yazi \
doggo carapace xh sd yq \
hyperfine watchexec \
github:ouch-org/ouch fastfetch duf dust usage jq

Install jq through apt if needed in scripts or anywhere else instead of mise

optional tools

mise use -g age lazygit btop gdu trippy aqua:tealdeer-rs/tealdeer github:dalance/procs

python tooling

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
uv tool install --python 3.13 posting

There exists one rust alternative too

13. MAINTENANCE SCRIPTS

Bash history dedupe (preserve timestamps, remove only `cd` and `cd ..`)

tac "$HISTFILE" | awk '/^#[0-9]+$/{ts=$0;next}!s[$0]++&&!/^(cleawr|cls|l|ls|la|ll|lh|pwd|exit|cd|cd \.\.|history|top|htop|v)$/{if(ts)print ts;print;ts=""}' | tac >"$HISTFILE.tmp" && mv "$HISTFILE.tmp" "$HISTFILE" && history -c && history -r

Bash history dedupe (remove timestamps, remove only `cd` and `cd ..`)

tac "$HISTFILE" | awk '!/^#[0-9]+$/&&!s[$0]++&&!/^(cleawr|cls|l|ls|la|ll|lh|pwd|exit|cd|cd \.\.|history|top|htop|v)$/' | tac >"$HISTFILE.tmp" && mv "$HISTFILE.tmp" "$HISTFILE" && history -c && history -r

Bash history dedupe (remove timestamps, remove all `cd` variants)

tac "$HISTFILE" | awk '!/^#[0-9]+$/&&!s[$0]++&&!/^(cleawr|cls|l|ls|la|ll|lh|pwd|exit|history|top|htop|v)$/&&!/^cd($| )/' | tac >"$HISTFILE.tmp" && mv "$HISTFILE.tmp" "$HISTFILE" && history -c && history -r

PowerShell dedupe (remove only `cd` and `cd ..`)

$h=(Get-PSReadLineOption).HistorySavePath;$l=[IO.File]::ReadAllLines($h);$s=@{};$o=for($i=$l.Length-1;$i -ge 0;$i--){if(!$s[$l[$i]] -and $l[$i] -notmatch '^(cleawr|cls|l|ls|la|ll|lh|pwd|exit|cd|cd \.\.|history|top|htop|v)$'){$s[$l[$i]]=$true;$l[$i]}};[array]::Reverse($o);$o|Set-Content $h

PowerShell dedupe (remove all `cd` variants)

$h=(Get-PSReadLineOption).HistorySavePath;$l=[IO.File]::ReadAllLines($h);$s=@{};$o=for($i=$l.Length-1;$i -ge 0;$i--){if(!$s[$l[$i]] -and $l[$i] -notmatch '^(cleawr|cls|l|ls|la|ll|lh|pwd|exit|history|top|htop|v)$' -and $l[$i] -notmatch '^cd($| )'){$s[$l[$i]]=$true;$l[$i]}};[array]::Reverse($o);$o|Set-Content $h

PowerShell sort unique

$h=(Get-PSReadLineOption).HistorySavePath
(Get-Content $h | Sort-Object -Unique) | Set-Content $h

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
.bashrc		.bashrc
.vimrc		.vimrc
Readme.md		Readme.md
chrome bookmarks 31-03-26.html		chrome bookmarks 31-03-26.html
edge bookmarks 31-03-26.html		edge bookmarks 31-03-26.html
fastfetch_new.jsonc		fastfetch_new.jsonc
fastfetch_old.jsonc		fastfetch_old.jsonc
init.lua		init.lua
new_vimrc.txt		new_vimrc.txt
powershellprofile.ps1		powershellprofile.ps1
starship_backup.toml		starship_backup.toml
tmux.conf		tmux.conf
tmux_custom.conf		tmux_custom.conf
ublock_2026-02-08_20.14.14.txt		ublock_2026-02-08_20.14.14.txt
yazi_theme.toml		yazi_theme.toml

Latest commit

History

Folders and files

Repository files navigation

CLI Tools & Terminal Productivity

Table of Contents

System Principles (NON-NEGOTIABLE RULES)

Installation Architecture

XDG Base Directory Specification

1. CORE CLI KIT (DAILY USE)

2. EXPERIMENTAL / EVALUATION TOOLS

Still to Review

Done Reviewing

3. TERMINAL & SHELL ECOSYSTEM

Terminal Emulators

Shells

Fonts

Prompt Engine

4. NAVIGATION & FILE DISCOVERY

5. FUZZY FINDING & PREVIEW SYSTEM

6. HISTORY & COMPLETION SYSTEM

7. GIT & VERSION CONTROL TOOLING

8. SYSTEM MONITORING & ANALYSIS

9. NETWORKING & API TOOLS

10. DEVOPS & CLOUD TOOLING

11. PRODUCTIVITY & AUTOMATION

12. INSTALLATION MANIFESTS

System Tools (APT baseline)

optional tools

Official Repository Tools

mise global tools

optional tools

python tooling

13. MAINTENANCE SCRIPTS

Bash history dedupe (preserve timestamps, remove only cd and cd ..)

Bash history dedupe (remove timestamps, remove only cd and cd ..)

Bash history dedupe (remove timestamps, remove all cd variants)

PowerShell dedupe (remove only cd and cd ..)

PowerShell dedupe (remove all cd variants)

PowerShell sort unique

About

Resources

Stars

Watchers

Forks

Releases

Packages

Contributors

Languages

Bash history dedupe (preserve timestamps, remove only `cd` and `cd ..`)

Bash history dedupe (remove timestamps, remove only `cd` and `cd ..`)

Bash history dedupe (remove timestamps, remove all `cd` variants)

PowerShell dedupe (remove only `cd` and `cd ..`)

PowerShell dedupe (remove all `cd` variants)