I Made My Terminal Understand English (And You Can Too)

Matheus Lima — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 19:18:37 +0000

I was tired of the constant context switching - knowing exactly what I wanted to do, but having to Google the exact command syntax every single time. So I vibe coded something simple: a way to just tell my terminal what I want in plain English.

Now instead of searching "how to find large files shell", I just type:
# find large files from this week

And get:
find . -type f -size +50M -mtime -7

The plugin (zsh-ai) is intentionally minimal - just 5KB of shell script, no heavy frameworks or dependencies. It's been part of my daily workflow for a few weeks now, and honestly, it's been more useful than I expected.

Here's what I learned building it:

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best one
You don't need a complex setup for AI to be useful
Safety first: it suggests commands but never auto-executes them

I'm sharing this because I genuinely think others might find it helpful, but also because I'd love feedback on:

What commands do you constantly forget the syntax for?
Edge cases I haven't thought of?
Features that would make this actually useful for your workflow?

GitHub: https://github.com/matheusml/zsh-ai

DEV Community: Matheus Lima

I Made My Terminal Understand English (And You Can Too)