Atuin v18.13 – better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell • Hacker News Board

Re: Atuin v18.13 – better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell

#21

Post by zenoprax » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 1:08 PM UTC

h4ch1 wrote: post #17

GardenLetter27 wrote: post #2

Atuin is great. This, fish, LazyGit, and zellij are mandatory for me now.

what does zellij offer that tmux doesn't? I love tmux and haven't had a reason to switch for a while, but have heard these new Rust based terminal tooling get really popular.

If all you need is basic splits, sessions, and some simple templates/layouts (and like the convenience of knowing that tmux is widely available, and often installed by default) then you're fine to stay on tmux.

Zellij can do things like floating windows, contextual keybinding guidance (helps learn everything that can be done), and a more complex layout schema. You can disable all the UI eye-candy and switch to tmux-style bindings too.

It's worth trying out. I use both so that I can still function on systems without it.

Re: Atuin v18.13 – better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell

#22

Post by theusus » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 1:08 PM UTC

All I want is auto complete for the commands on Windows. And none provides

Re: Atuin v18.13 – better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell

#23

Post by ramon156 » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 1:08 PM UTC

Bnjoroge wrote: post #13

duskdozer wrote: post #12

I was really pleased finding this last year, but I guess it's time to look for an alternative. I don't get why everything has to have AI shoved into it

It’s optional- you can choose to opt in or not.

Its also the Repo. There's a lot of AI-guided commits. I'm all for using AI in a reliable and safe environment, but letting Claude steer just leads to garbage

Re: Atuin v18.13 – better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell

#24

Post by mijoharas » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

evandrofisico wrote: post #18

colesantiago wrote: post #9

As soon as a tool adds pricing, price increases or adds AI that's when it begins to be enshittified. Why does this happen mostly?

Yep, out of precaution i've never used their sync infrastructure, which I guess was reasonably cheap to run, but the moment you add LLMs to the mix it is obvious that they are in for the free VC money and are soon going to need a lot of investment to keep the lights on.

The thing I found frustrating was I wanted to merge changes with just files without their sync server (i.e. just import this other atuin sqlite dB) so I raised a PR to support that.

They closed it (which is fine) but there is no offline migrate alternative.

It's a shame, and fair enough, their project, but I don't think my wishes and the projects are very aligned.

I keep half meaning to move back to zsh-histdb (I think that's what it was called) but haven't found an impetus to.

I'll probably check if there's a file based sync option next time I switch machines and decide then.

Re: Atuin v18.13 – better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell

#25

Post by righthand » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

lta wrote: post #5

Why does every tool on the face of earth try to add AI features ? Good tools are simple and orthogonal. If you want AI, there's already plenty of other tools doing it probably better. I'm overall fairly disappointed by this announcement. This IMHO doesn't bode well

AI features are the new Electron app. Welcome to the new hell, please finish installing your 10 different inference engines, one for each app.

Re: Atuin v18.13 – better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell

#26

Post by Myzel394 » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

I'm still looking forward to being able to only remember a command for a specific time. I currently block sensitive commands, which completely destroys the ability to just press the up arrow key to quickly edit the command. If we had like a timeout of 1 minute for sensitive commands, we could edit them and still make sure they are not persistent

Re: Atuin v18.13 – better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell

#27

Post by semiquaver » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 1:13 PM UTC

I’m baffled by how bitter and angry the comments are. Atuin is one of my favorite everyday tools and this release sounds great!

Re: Atuin v18.13 – better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell

#28

Post by Myzel394 » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 1:13 PM UTC

atuin ai kinda reminds me of https://github.com/Myzel394/zsh-copilot (yes, that's by me :P)

Re: Atuin v18.13 – better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell

#29

Post by n8henrie » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

h4ch1 wrote: post #17

GardenLetter27 wrote: post #2

Atuin is great. This, fish, LazyGit, and zellij are mandatory for me now.

what does zellij offer that tmux doesn't? I love tmux and haven't had a reason to switch for a while, but have heard these new Rust based terminal tooling get really popular.

A ton more conflicting keybindings.

I switched away from tmux a year or so ago due to one crash I kept getting, but thinking of going back. Really miss the simplicity.

Re: Atuin v18.13 – better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell

#30

Post by grosswait » Sat, Mar 21, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

dc_giant wrote: post #7

Hmm might be great for some. I’m a Unix philosophy guy, one tool for one job. So far atuin was fine to be a better search history. Now it might be time to look for simpler alternative. Any suggestions? (I’m on zsh)

AI appears to be opt in