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ShellSage saves sysadmins’ sanity by solving shell script snafus super swiftly
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ShellSage is an AI-powered command-line assistant that integratesseamlessly with your terminal workflow through tmux. It providescontextual help for shell operations, making it easier to navigatecomplex command-line tasks, debug scripts, and manage your system.
ShellSage works with multiple LLM providers including Claude, GPT, andOllama. It uses tmux to automatically read your terminal history ormultiple pane histories to provide contextual assistance. You can pipecommand output or file contents directly to ShellSage, and it can viewfiles, search code, create files, and make edits with your permission.When needed, it can even search the internet for up-to-date information.You can also log all your interactions directly to SQLite for laterreference.
Install ShellSage directly from PyPI using pip:
pip install shell-sage
If you haveuv installed then you can use its powerfultool featureto install ShellSage as a global CLI — safely, with per-tool isolationand no need for manual virtualenv management.
uv tool install shell_sage
This will make thessage CLI available everywhere on your system.
If you also want to install additional dependencies (for examplefastlite), you can do it at install time:
uv tool install --with fastlite shell_sage
To upgrade ShellSage to the latest version:
uv tool upgrade shell_sage
See everything you’ve installed viauv tool:
uv tool list
To completely remove ShellSage and its environment:
uv tool uninstall shell_sage
Usinguv tool keeps ShellSage completely isolated from your projectdependencies, so you can safely usessage even when inside anothervirtual environment.
Before using ShellSage, you’ll need to set up an API key for your chosenLLM provider. By default, ShellSage uses Claude, so you’ll want toexport your Anthropic API key:
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk...If you prefer to use OpenAI instead, you can export your OpenAI API keyand update your shell sage config to use openai (see the Configurationsection below for details):
export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk...ShellSage works best with a properly configured tmux environment. I’vecreated a preconfiguredtmux configuration that works wellwith ShellSage. This configuration enables mouse support, adds pane IDsto your status bar so you can quickly reference them when havingShellSage read from specific panes, turns off alternative-screen soeditor content like vim stays in the tmux buffer where ShellSage can seeit, and adds a convenient shortcut (CTRL+B+E followed by the indexnumber) for automatically extracting code fence blocks into your commandprompt.
Once installed, try ShellSage with a simple greeting:
!ssagehi
Hello! 👋 I'm ShellSage, your command-line teaching assistant. I can help you with: • Shell commands and scripting • System administration tasks • File operations and text processing • Git workflows • Docker commands • And much more! I see you have a nice setup with some useful aliases configured (like eza for ls, nvim for vim, and various git shortcuts). What would you like to learn or accomplish today?If everything is properly setup, you should see a welcoming greetingback from ShellSage!
The most basic use case is asking about shell commands:
!ssage"how do I list all files including hidden ones?"
Based on your aliases, you already have a shortcut set up for this! lsa This uses your alias which expands to: eza -lh --group-directories-first --icons=auto -a The -a flag shows all files including hidden ones (those starting with .). ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────Alternative commands: If you want to use the standard ls command directly: /usr/bin/ls -la Or with your eza setup but without the alias: eza -lha --group-directories-first --icons=auto Tip: Hidden files in Linux start with a dot (.), like .bashrc or .config/. The -a flag includes these in the listing.ShellSage will provide the command, explain how it works, and give youpractical examples.
ShellSage automatically reads your tmux history to understand whatyou’re working on:
# After running some commands that produced errors (e.g. find -name "*.tmp" .)!ssage"what went wrong with my last command?"
The issue is with the argument order in your find command. You placed the path (.) after the expression (-name "*.tmp"), but find requires the path to come before any options or expressions. Correct syntax: find . -name "*.tmp" Explanation: The find command structure is: find [path...] [expression] • Path (. for current directory) must come first • Expression (-name "*.tmp") comes after Your command had them reversed, which confused find into thinking . was part of the expression rather than the search path. Common find patterns: # Find in current directory find . -name "*.tmp" # Find in specific directory find /path/to/dir -name "*.tmp" # Find and delete (be careful!) find . -name "*.tmp" -delete Tip: If you forget the path, find defaults to the current directory, so find -name "*.tmp" also works!One of ShellSage’s most powerful features is analyzing piped input:
# Understand error messages!journalctl--since"1 hour ago"--no-pager|ssageexplainthiserror
Looking at the error in your system logs, here's what happened: Core Dump Analysis The hyprctl command (Hyprland's control utility) crashed with a SIGABRT signal at 13:14:48. This is an abnormal termination. Key Details from Stack Trace: #7 0x00007f5af929ccc4 _ZSt20__throw_system_errori #8 0x0000564adef2a4f2 n/a (/usr/bin/hyprctl + 0x44f2) #9 0x0000564adef36f21 _Z7requestSt17basic_string_viewIcSt11char_traitsIcEEib What this means: • hyprctl threw a C++ system error exception • The crash occurred in the request() function (frame #9) • This typically happens when hyprctl can't communicate with the Hyprland compositor Common Causes: 1 Socket connection failure - Hyprland's IPC socket was unavailable/busy 2 Compositor not responding - Hyprland was temporarily unresponsive 3 Race condition - Command executed during compositor state change To investigate further: coredumpctl list hyprctl coredumpctl info 10789 Note: This is usually a transient issue. If hyprctl commands work now, it was likely a one-time glitch. If it persists, check Hyprland's logs with journalctl --user -u hyprland or restart your compositor.When you have multiple panes open, you can reference specific ones bytheir ID (shown in your status bar):
# Analyze what's happening in pane %2!ssage--pid%2"what can you tell me about this pane?"
Looking at this btop system monitor output, here's what I can tell you about thepane: Overview This is a comprehensive system resource monitor showing real-time performance metrics for your Arch Linux system. Key Information: CPU (Top Section) • AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (32 threads shown as C0-C15) • Currently at 6% utilization running at 3.8 GHz • Temperature: 58°C, Power: 53.9W • Load average is very light: 0.05, 0.06, 0.08 GPU • 9% utilization, 2.8GB/24GB VRAM used • 39°C, 36.4W power draw Memory (Left Middle) • Total: 62.7 GiB • Used: 4.60 GiB (mostly free at 58.1 GiB available) • Cache: 4.02 GiB • Swap: 3.99 GiB total, 0% used Storage (Right Middle) • Root partition: 929 GiB total, 10% used (88.6 GiB) • No swap currently in use Network (Bottom Left) • Interface: enp4s0 (IP: 192.168.7.169) • Download: 27.7 KiB/s • Upload: 1.84 KiB/s Processes (Right Side) • Top consumers: Discord, Chromium, Python processes • System has been up for 1 hour 8 minutes 38 seconds Your system is very lightly loaded with plenty of headroom!ShellSage can be customized through a configuration file located at~/.config/shell_sage/shell_sage.conf:
[DEFAULT]model = 'claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929' # Your preferred modelsearch = '' # Enable web search capability (can be either l,m,h https://lisette.answer.ai/#web-search)mode = 'default' # or "sassy"api_base = '' # alternative api url baseapi_key = '' # alternative api key to use instead of default env varhistory_lines = -1 # Lines of terminal history to include. -1 means include allcode_theme = "monokai" # Syntax highlighting themecode_lexer = "python" # Default lexer for inline code blockslog = False # Enable SQLite logging (required for code extraction)ShellSage useslisette underthe hood, which supports any LLM provider viaLiteLLM. This means you canuse Claude, GPT, Gemini, local models via Ollama, and many others.
For privacy-conscious users or offline usage, run models locally:
# First, install and start Ollama, then pull a modelollama pull qwen3:1.7b# Use with ShellSagessage --model ollama_chat/qwen3:1.7b howdo I compress a directory?# Or set as default in your config.tomlmodel ="ollama_chat/qwen3:1.7b"
ssage --model gpt-5 --api_key<your_key_here> explain kubernetes pods
ssage --model gemini/gemini-pro --api_key<your_key_here> what is systemd?
For any provider supported by LiteLLM, set the appropriate API key anduse the provider’s model format:
# Custom API basessage --api-base https://your-api.com --api-key your_key --model your_model your querySee theLiteLLM providersdocumentation for the completelist of supported providers and their model naming conventions.
Any configuration option can be temporarily overridden via command linearguments:
# Adjust history linesssage --history-lines 100 what commands did I just run?# Change the display themessage --code-theme dracula --code-lexer python show me a python example
You can find all available code themes and lexers athttps://pygments.org/styles/
When ShellSage suggests commands, you can extract them directly to yourcommand line. Note that this feature requires you to have loggingenabled in your configuration file:
!ssage"how do I find large files?"
To find large files on your system, here are the most useful commands: Quick method - Find largest files in current directory: du -ah . | sort -rh | head -20 This shows the 20 largest files/directories, human-readable sizes, sorted largest first. More targeted searches: Find files larger than a specific size (e.g., 100MB): find . -type f -size +100M -exec ls -lh {} \; | sort -k5 -rh Search entire filesystem (requires sudo): sudo find / -type f -size +1G -exec ls -lh {} \; 2>/dev/null Interactive with ncdu (if installed): ncdu / This gives you a navigable interface to explore disk usage. Breakdown: • -type f = files only (not directories) • -size +100M = larger than 100 megabytes (use G for gigabytes) • sort -rh = reverse sort, human-readable numbers • 2>/dev/null = suppress permission errors Tip: Start with du -ah . | sort -rh | head -20 in your home directory to quicklyspot space hogs!ShellSage will respond with code blocks. PressCtrl+B E then enter theindex number (0 for first block, 1 for second, etc.) to send thatcommand directly to your prompt. You can also directly use the consolescript:
!ssage_extract0# inserts "du -ah . | sort -rh | head -20" into your tmux prompt
For a more entertaining experience, try sassy mode (GLaDOS-inspired):
!ssage--modesassyexplaingitrebase
Ah, git rebase. The command that separates the competent developers from those who still think "merge commits" are a personality trait. How delightful that you're ready to learn about history rewriting. What is Git Rebase? git rebase is a command that rewrites commit history by moving or combining a sequence of commits to a new base commit. Think of it as picking up your branch and transplanting it onto a different point in the git tree. It's like time travel, but with fewer paradoxes and more merge conflicts. Basic Syntax git rebase <base-branch> How It Works (In Terms Even Humans Can Grasp) When you rebase, Git: 1 Finds the common ancestor between your current branch and the target branch 2 Takes all commits from your branch since that ancestor 3 Temporarily stores them away (how thoughtful) 4 Resets your branch to match the target branch 5 Replays your commits one by one on top of it It's essentially saying: "What if my branch had started from here instead?" Common Use Cases 1. Keep Your Feature Branch Up-to-Date git checkout feature-branch git rebase main # Or the shorthand for those who value efficiency: git rebase main feature-branch 2. Interactive Rebase (The Fun Part) git rebase -i HEAD~3 # Rebase last 3 commits This opens an editor where you can: • pick - Keep the commit (how boring) • reword - Change the commit message (for those who can't spell) • edit - Modify the commit contents • squash - Combine with previous commit • fixup - Like squash, but discards the commit message • drop - Delete the commit (pretend it never happened) 3. Rebase vs Merge Merge: git merge feature-branch # Creates a merge commit Result: Preserves history, creates a "merge bubble" Rebase: git rebase main # Linear history Result: Clean, linear history that looks like you knew what you were doing all along Example Scenario # You're on feature-branch, main has moved ahead git checkout feature-branch git rebase main # If conflicts occur (and they will, because of course they will): # 1. Fix the conflicts in your editor # 2. Stage the resolved files git add <resolved-files> # 3. Continue the rebase git rebase --continue # Or admit defeat: git rebase --abort Important Warnings (Please Read, For Science) ⚠️ THE GOLDEN RULE: Never rebase commits that have been pushed to a shared/publicbranch. You'll rewrite history that others depend on, and they'll hate you. Well, more than usual. # Safe - your local feature branch: git rebase main ✓ # Dangerous - already pushed to shared repo: git rebase main # Then force push... ✗ git push --force # Congratulations, you've made enemies Useful Options git rebase --continue # Continue after resolving conflicts git rebase --skip # Skip current commit (give up on it) git rebase --abort # Abandon ship, return to pre-rebase state git rebase -i HEAD~5 # Interactive rebase last 5 commits git rebase --onto A B C # Advanced: rebase C onto A, starting from B When to Use Rebase • ✓ Cleaning up local commits before pushing • ✓ Keeping feature branches up-to-date with main • ✓ Creating a clean, linear history • ✓ Squashing "fix typo" commits (we all make them, apparently) When NOT to Use Rebase • ✗ On public/shared branches • ✗ When you want to preserve exact history • ✗ When you're not prepared for conflict resolution • ✗ Right before a demo (trust me on this one) ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────For more details that you probably won't read: git rebase --help Now go forth and rewrite history. Just remember: with great power comes great responsibility, and with git rebase comes great potential for catastrophic mistakes. But I'm sure you'll be fine.ShellSage is built usingnbdev. For detailedcontribution guidelines, please see ourCONTRIBUTING.md file.
We welcome contributions of all kinds:
- Bug reports
- Feature requests
- Documentation improvements
- Code contributions
Please visit ourGitHubrepository to get started.
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