Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?

#1

Post by elC0mpa » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

Hello, as a CLI lover and Software Engineer, I really love CLIs. I spent most of my day using the terminal, mainly because I use NeoVIM as my "IDE" (I know it is not an IDE). So basically I want you to tell me which CLI tools you on a daily basis.

My own answer: zsh with oh-my-zsh neovim gemini serverless framework aws-doctor kiro-cli fastfetch

As you can see most of these are related to work, software engineering, the cloud and AI Assistants

You can tell me about these, but I am looking for general purpose CLIs, something like a music player or something like this. Thanks a lot!!!!

Re: Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?

#2

Post by verdverm » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

The Dagger TUI is pretty sweet. They have an awesome renderer for OTEL spans (how they emit and view the steps). Built on the Charm suite, it is a better way (imo) to define, build, and run containers and containerized workflows (not at scale).

I back my agents and sessions with it for superpowers beyond sandboxing.

My personal CLI/TUI is https://github.com/hofstadter-io/hof and starts from a CUE centric developer experience. The above is also a part of it

Re: Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?

#3

Post by chunpaiyang » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

- tmux

- vim: NERDTree, Gblame

- zsh

- tig: best way to browse git history in terminal

- claud code

Re: Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?

#4

Post by danielszlaski » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?

#5

Post by elC0mpa » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

chunpaiyang wrote: post #3

- tmux - vim: NERDTree, Gblame - zsh - tig: best way to browse git history in terminal - claud code

Reaaly nice one tig, will definitely try it out. Thanks!!!!

Re: Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?

#6

Post by elC0mpa » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

verdverm wrote: post #2

The Dagger TUI is pretty sweet. They have an awesome renderer for OTEL spans (how they emit and view the steps). Built on the Charm suite, it is a better way (imo) to define, build, and run containers and containerized workflows (not at scale). I back my agents and sessions with it for superpowers beyond sandboxing. My personal CLI/TUI is https://github.com/hofstadter-io/hof and starts from a CUE centric developer ex…

hof looks pretty nice, definitely deserves a star, will also take a look at The Dagger. Thanks

Re: Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?

#7

Post by Hackbraten » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

Completely boring technology: aurutils, bash (with bash-it), bat, cp, git, grep, head, man, mv, pacman, rm, rsync, ssh, sudo, tmux, tree, vim.

Re: Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?

#8

Post by sgbeal » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 2:42 PM UTC

According to:

    $ history | awk '{print $2}' | sort -u

Slightly edited:

bash, bc, convert, cp, df, du, fossil, grep, less, tail, make, man, mc, mkdir, mv, ps, rm, ssh, scp, sudo, tar, gzip, unzip

Re: Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?

#9

Post by verdverm » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 2:47 PM UTC

elC0mpa wrote: post #6

verdverm wrote: post #2

The Dagger TUI is pretty sweet. They have an awesome renderer for OTEL spans (how they emit and view the steps). Built on the Charm suite, it is a better way (imo) to define, build, and run containers and containerized workflows (not at scale). I back my agents and sessions with it for superpowers beyond sandboxing. My personal CLI/TUI is https://github.com/hofstadter-io/hof and starts from a CUE centric developer ex…

hof looks pretty nice, definitely deserves a star, will also take a look at The Dagger. Thanks

Thanks, hof has 3-6 cli/tui depending on how you count. A subset of Dagger and CUE cli commands are embedded for convenience. There is an old tcell TUI inspired by the bloomberg terminal and the start of a new Charm based TUI in the agentic area. There may still be a repl in there, not sure if it's wired up currently.

Re: Ask HN: Which CLI tools do you use daily?

#10

Post by elC0mpa » Fri, Apr 03, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC

verdverm wrote: post #9

elC0mpa wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hof looks pretty nice, definitely deserves a star, will also take a look at The Dagger. Thanks

Thanks, hof has 3-6 cli/tui depending on how you count. A subset of Dagger and CUE cli commands are embedded for convenience. There is an old tcell TUI inspired by the bloomberg terminal and the start of a new Charm based TUI in the agentic area. There may still be a repl in there, not sure if it's wired up currently.

Don't know if you have any experience with golang or aws, but maybe it worth taking a look at aws-doctor (https://github.com/elC0mpa/aws-doctor). This is a CLI tool I built myself, in the future want to make it more interactive and I am looking for some CLI apps to take ideas from there