whetū - Zero-config cross-shell prompt in Zig with history picker
Show HN: Whetuu – a zero-config cross-shell prompt written in Zig
whetū is a lightning-fast, zero-configuration shell prompt written in Zig that works seamlessly across different shells. It automatically detects your environment to display Git status, toolchain versions, and command duration without needing any manual setup. The tool features a built-in history picker accessible via the up arrow, offering syntax-highlighted command filtering scoped to your current directory. Designed with security and performance in mind, it renders in milliseconds, ensures no data leaves your machine, and prevents slow repositories from hanging your shell.
A slow repository cannot hang your shell.
- linsomniac
This isn't news, the real news is that the AI tooling allows YOU (specifically) to have a custom prompt tool built specifically for you, in the same or less effort it would take to set up one of the existing prompt tools.
For example, I liked the idea of this but had no interest in the shell history integration; I use atuin.
So I had codex build me one, including the 250ms wait for git, and if git takes longer than that it backgrounds it, uses the last git status until git can return an updated status. https://github.com/linsomniac/jafoprompt
- hiccuphippo
I stopped using fancy prompts at some point. My current prompt is a single $ sign. If I need to know the current dir I just run cwd, I don't need it on every prompt. If I need the git branch just use git status (though aliased to gs [no, I don't use ghostscript]).
- drdexebtjl
I don’t want my prompt to also handle shell history, and especially in such an “opinionated” way.
What happens to my actual shell-provided history?
Does too much for me.
edit:
> Both files follow the XDG base directory spec, so neither lives in the install directory. Removing whetuu with rm -rf ~/.whetuu cannot take your history with it. whetuu paths prints both locations.
Please stop creating directories in my $HOME.
- minraws
I didn't quite gel with it, seemed overly, well opinionated for no meaningful performance or otherwise improvement to any other simple prompt.
- linsomniac
Unclear to me: does this also do shell history? I'm using atuin and not interested in changing that. I did just switch over to oh-my-posh a few weeks ago and it's good, but I would be open to trying something else to compare, particularly since I have some directories with monorepos where oh-my-posh goes out to lunch for a couple seconds. Also oh-my-posh sometimes loses its mind and switches back to the default prompt rather than my customized one.
I'm on the fence about my current "2-line prompt, collapsing to a single line" when I press enter. I like that it gives me a lot of room, but there's some information I find I'm wishing was persisted in my shell history (git branch, previous command execution time for long running commands).