Tired of typing `cd`? I built a Proton-T is a smarter cd command, blazing-fast directory jumper in Rust

#terminal #productivity #rust #cli

As developers, we live in the terminal. And for me, living in the terminal is a choice for two things: speed and coolness.

But let's be honest, typing cd ../../../some/deep/workspace over and over again is neither fast nor cool. You either have to remember the exact path or frantically spam the TAB key.

That's why I built Proton-T — a smarter, faster cd alternative that actually learns your workflow.

What is Proton-T?

Proton-T allows you to "jump" to your most frequently used directories in just a few keystrokes. It works seamlessly across all major shells (Bash, Zsh, Fish, PowerShell) and uses a smart Frecency + Intent matching algorithm to understand exactly where you want to go.

Forget about absolute paths. Just type what you remember.

✨ How it works (The Magic)

Proton-T doesn't just do dumb string matching. It calculates intents:

🧠 Frecency Engine: It balances frequency (how often you visit) and recency (how recently you visited). It ages gracefully, so your active projects are always prioritized over that one folder you opened 6 months ago.
🎯 Intent Engine: You can literally speak to your terminal. Typing t recent project computes "What was that project I touched yesterday?" and instantly jumps there.
📂 Project Awareness: It automatically detects workspaces (looking for package.json, Cargo.toml, .git, etc.) and gives them a 1.2x algorithm boost!
🔍 Smart Fallback: Never visited a folder before? Proton-T will scan your common fallback roots (like ~/Documents or ~/Downloads) on the fly to find it.

Let's see it in action

Proton-T uses the t command to jump, and the ti command for an interactive menu.

# Jump to the best match for 'foo'
t foo              

# Add multiple keywords to narrow it down
t foo bar          

# Use intent keywords to jump to exactly what you need
t recent project   

# Go back to the previous directory
t -