Let's face it, as developers we practically live in the terminal. We're constantly typing the same commands over and over again. Sure, aliases help, but it's not always easy to figure out which commands to alias. That's where a little AI help can make a big difference.
The simple idea
Instead of trying to manually pick out patterns in your command history, you can use AI to do the following:
- Analyze how you use the terminal
- Pinpoint your most frequently used commands
- Recommend the best aliases to use
- Explain why it's making those recommendations
And here is how.
1. Collect Your Command History
First, you need to gather a sample of how you use your terminal. You've got a couple of options:
# Option 1: Get your last 1000 commands
history | tail -n 1000 > command_history.txt
# Option 2: Export a terminal session
# Just copy and paste a relevant part of your terminal session
2. Ask AI the Right Questions
When you're ready to ask the AI for help, be specific in your request. Here's a good way to phrase it:
"I use these commands a lot in my terminal. Can you:
1. Find patterns in how I work?
2. Suggest aliases that would save me time?
3. Explain why each alias would be helpful?
4. Give me the code to implement them?
Here's my command history:
[paste your history]"
3. Put AI's Suggestions to Work
When the AI gives you its response, don't just blindly copy and paste everything. Instead:
- Look over each suggested alias carefully.
- Try them out in a new terminal session.
- Tweak them to fit your exact needs.
- Add them to your shell configuration file.
Example
I know this example seems a bit naive, as we now have many tools to automate Git, including pre-commit, but I think these commands are pretty familiar to any developer for demonstration purposes.
Here's how this worked for me. I recently shared my typical Git workflow with an AI, and it noticed that I often:
- Check Git status
- Stash changes
- Create "work in progress" commits
- Switch branches
- Merge and push changes
Based on that, it suggested aliases like these:
alias gs='git status'
alias gst='git stash'
alias gstp='git stash pop'
alias wip='git add . && git commit -m "wip"'
Each suggestion came with a clear explanation of why it would save me time, based on my actual usage patterns.
Wrap-Up
Using AI to analyze your command-line habits is like having a productivity coach constantly looking over your shoulder. It can spot patterns you might overlook and suggest improvements you wouldn't have thought of.
airabbit.blog
The trick is to share your actual usage data with the AI and be clear about what you want to achieve. What's the payoff? A more efficient, personalized command-line experience that saves you time and reduces the monotony of typing.
Looking ahead
Right now, we're focusing on using AI to streamline text-based commands. But that's just the beginning. We're already starting to use AI to understand and improve image-based tasks, and it's not a big leap to imagine AI helping with physical tasks in the near future. The future of AI is not just theoretical; we're already starting to see it unfold before our eyes!
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