The CLI Awakens

Building your CLI toolkit is like crafting your own lightsaber—a deeply personal, powerful, and highly rewarding journey to wield the Force of the terminal. Let me guide you through the art of designing a "Jedi-grade" toolset, from selecting the right components to mastering advanced techniques.

Whether you’re a Padawan or a seasoned Jedi Master, this talk will help you unlock the full power of the CLI. May the terminal be with you!

Transcript

1. The CLI Awakens Marc-Antoine Aubé, Confoo 2025
2. "I know people who have not mastered their tools who are good programmers, but not a tool master who remained a mediocre programmer." — Yoda (Kent Beck) yoda Ziko, CC BY-SA 4.0 h4ps:/ /crea<vecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
3. Anatomy of your lightsaber 1. Hilt: Terminal Emulator 2. Kyber Crystal: Shell 3. Handgrip: Prompt 4. Focusing Crystal: CLI Programs lightsaber h,ps:/ /pxhere.com/en/photo/1205281
4. 1. Hilt: What's a Terminal Emulator, anyway? terminal h+ps:/ /commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=493141
5. Recommended Emulators • Alacri'y: cross-pla,orm, GPU- accelerated (Rust) • Ki'y: cross-pla,orm, feature-rich, GPU-accelerated (C, Python) • Wezterm: cross-pla,orm, GPU- accelerated, mul?plexer (Rust)
6. Other popular choices • iTerm: macOS, user-friendly, feature- rich (Objec:ve-C, Swi>) • Hyper: from the folks at Vercel (Javascript) • Warp: commercial ($), AI-agent, IDE-like (Rust)
7. 2. Kyber Crystal: Choosing your shell crystal W.carter, CC BY-SA 4.0 h6ps:/ /crea:vecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
8. Most popular shells • bash (1989): o*en the default login shell on Linux • zsh (1990): default shell on macOS • fish (2005): syntax highlighAng, auto-suggest, tab-compleAon (baFeries included)
9. Exo$c / Experimental shells • elvish (2013): structured data processing, na8ve support for JSON and Yaml • xonsh (2015): Python powered • nushell (2019): works on structured data instead of files and streams of text
10. 3. Handgrip: Make it comfortable and good looking lightsaber2 KarleHorn, CC BY 3.0 h8ps:/ /crea=vecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
11. Shell Configura.on Frameworks
12. Shell Prompts
13. 4. Focusing Crystals: The shell programs lense User Fir0002 on en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 h<p:/ /crea@vecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons
14. Use Cases • Naviga'on (cd) • Search (find, grep) • Modifica'on (sed, awk, tr, cut) • Sor'ng (sort) • Comparison (diff) • Presenta'on (less, head, column) • ...
15. Naviga&on # List the contents of a directory $ ls Cargo.toml src # Change directory into a subdirectory $ cd src # Print the current working directory $ pwd ~/Code/confoo/src
16. Naviga&on (cont) # Return to the previous directory, # using the `-` argument $ cd - && pwd ~/Code/confoo # Return to the user's home directory $ cd && pwd ~/
17. Search # Find all files with the .rs extension $ find . -name '*.rs' ./src/main.rs # Find all empty directories $ find . -type d -empty ./.git/objects/pack ./.git/objects/info ./.git/refs/heads ./.git/refs/tags
18. Search (con+nued) # Recursively search for the string "print" $ grep -r "print" . ./src/main.rs: println!("Hello, world!"); # Find all empty directories, # except those with "refs" in the name $ find . -type d -empty | grep -v "refs" ./.git/objects/pack ./.git/objects/info
19. "You must unlearn what you have learned." — Yoda yoda2 photographied by Supremerian1988, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
20. tldr
21. zoxide
22. fzf
23. fzf (cont.) # alias cb=... $ git branch --sort=-committerdate \ | fzf --header "Checkout branch" \ | xargs git checkout
24. fzf (cont.) # alias cpr=... $ gh pr list \ | fzf --header "Checkout PR" \ | awk '\''{print $(NF-2)}'\'' \ | xargs git checkout
25. fzf (last one, promised ! ) # alias de=... $ docker exec -it $( \ docker ps --format "{{.Names}}" \ | fzf --prompt="Choose docker container: " \ ) bash
26. fzf (ok, I lied ! ) # alias kp=... $ ps -a \ | fzf --prompt="Chosse process to kill: " \ | cut -d " " -f 1 \ | xargs kill -9
27. atuin
28. ripgrep $ rg 'print' . ./src/main.rs 2: println!("Hello, world!");
29. ambs/ambr $ ambs 'println' ./src/main.rs: println!("Hello, world!"); $ ambr 'println' 'print' ./src/main.rs: println!("Hello, world!"); -> print!("Hello, world!"); Replace keyword? [Y]es/[n]o/[a]ll/[q]uit: Y
30. jq
31. bat
32. rip (Rm ImProved)
33. ouch (Obvious Unified Compression Helper)
34. Bonus: Caring for your lightsaber maintenance Andy Dingley (scanner), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
35. .dotfiles • chezmoi: manage your dotfiles across mul3ple diverse machines, securely • dotbot: a tool that bootstraps your dotfiles
36. Bonus: Wielding your lightsaber (without chopping your legs off) training Steven Miller, CC BY 2.0 h5ps:/ /crea;vecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
37. In the age of AI, how relevant is it to learn and memorize CLI commands? ai Alenoach, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
38. Shu-ha-ri 守破離 • Shu: obey – learning fundamentals, techniques • Ha: break away – find excep9ons to the rules • Ri: transcend – there are no more rules
39. Learning Resources 1. linuxjourney.com 2. commandlinefu.com 3. Learn X in Y minutes 4. Your colleagues
40. "There has been an awakening. Have you felt it?" — Snoke
41. Thank You! @maaube@mastodon.online
42. Great tools that didn't make the cut • dasel: like jq, but supports JSON, YAML, TOML, XML, CSV • delta: beau=ful diffs in the terminal • fd: a fast and user-friendly alterna=ve to find • h)pie: a nice HTTP / API client for the terminal • hyperfine: a powerful benchmarking tool