Atuin v18.13 – better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell

https://blog.atuin.sh/atuin-v18-13/

by cenanozen • 4 months ago

95 81 4 months ago

blog.atuin.sh

GardenLetter27• 4 months ago

Atuin is great. This, fish, LazyGit, and zellij are mandatory for me now.

h4ch1• 4 months ago

what does zellij offer that tmux doesn't?

I love tmux and haven't had a reason to switch for a while, but have heard these new Rust based terminal tooling get really popular.

zenoprax• 4 months ago

If all you need is basic splits, sessions, and some simple templates/layouts (and like the convenience of knowing that tmux is widely available, and often installed by default) then you're fine to stay on tmux.

Zellij can do things like floating windows, contextual keybinding guidance (helps learn everything that can be done), and a more complex layout schema. You can disable all the UI eye-candy and switch to tmux-style bindings too.

It's worth trying out. I use both so that I can still function on systems without it.

n8henrie• 4 months ago

A ton more conflicting keybindings.

I switched away from tmux a year or so ago due to one crash I kept getting, but thinking of going back. Really miss the simplicity.

0cf8612b2e1e• 4 months ago

If you are comparing raw features, there is probably little to differentiate vs a legacy tool. However, the out of the box experience is fantastic, and the author has clearly put a lot of effort in their take without being locked into legacy decisions.

If you watch some of the screencasts and are not impressed, there is nothing more I can do to pitch the idea. My only complaint is that I feel like I am only ever scratching the surface of what the tool can offer.

https://zellij.dev/tutorials/basic-functionality/

rahimnathwani• 4 months ago

Atuin AI sounds like a useful addition. The page suggests they're probably using hosted models:

  We use the latest frontier models, which already do a good job of generating commands using well-known binaries and CLIs. On top of that, we integrate a dataset powered by man pages and command outputs to ensure you get the correct command first.

This is great, but does it mean we'll need to log in somehow? It doesn't seem reasonable to expect the project maintainers to pay for the tokens.

EDIT: I was unaware of Atuin's 'hub' which does things like sync your shell history across computers. I think they use the same sign-in as they already use for that: https://hub.atuin.sh/register

embedding-shape• 4 months ago

This part:

On top of that, we integrate a dataset powered by man pages and command outputs to ensure you get the correct command first.

Also makes it sound like they're "providing that dataset", rather than generating that from the users computer. Wouldn't that mean it's potentially a mismatch between various versions of the software available? Not to mention some OSes will have a different version of some software available compared to others, how does it deal with those situations if they're shipping a dataset?

_ache_• 4 months ago

There is no way is it not generated on user computer.

"get the correct command first" and "shipping a [external] dataset" are incompatible.

lta• 4 months ago

Why does every tool on the face of earth try to add AI features ? Good tools are simple and orthogonal. If you want AI, there's already plenty of other tools doing it probably better.

I'm overall fairly disappointed by this announcement. This IMHO doesn't bode well

Bnjoroge4• 4 months ago

It’s fine - I like the introduction of AI. It’s optional - if you don’t want it, turn it off or don’t use it

righthand• 4 months ago

AI features are the new Electron app. Welcome to the new hell, please finish installing your 10 different inference engines, one for each app.

qudat• 4 months ago

If you want VC money you need to put an AI spin on it.

tootie• 4 months ago

Product is free, open source and largely written and maintained by one person. Doesn't seem like a startup payday scheme.

dc_giant3• 4 months ago

Hmm might be great for some. I’m a Unix philosophy guy, one tool for one job. So far atuin was fine to be a better search history. Now it might be time to look for simpler alternative. Any suggestions? (I’m on zsh)

justech2• 4 months ago

I tried atuin and then switched back to fzf[0]. It's less features but that's not necessarily a negative.

[0]https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

kstrauser2• 4 months ago

Fzf doesn't let you sync your shell history, though. I self-host an Atuin server so that I can share that history across my various machines.

dc_giant3• 4 months ago

Yup already using fzf for other things will probably just go back for search history too.

prashantv• 4 months ago

I personally prefer the fzf UX, but I liked atuin's better tracking of history and sync abilities so I combined them: https://github.com/prashantv/atuin-fzf

grosswait• 4 months ago

AI appears to be opt in

anamexis3• 4 months ago

I have to ask -- why? Atuin has not gotten any worse at its core history search functionality. All of the new features are entirely opt-in. Why switch?

dc_giant3• 4 months ago

Because to me it feels like it gets more complex in ways I don’t like. It’s a matter of preference. To be honest had I not read about it I might have never noticed it but now I know and will probably go back to fzf.

dcre2• 4 months ago

What here takes them over the complexity threshold?

hakcermani• 4 months ago

not zsh .. plugging my bash script [1] (and gnome task bar UI) - to start a gnome terminal with a different named history file. [1]: https://github.com/appsmatics/gtsh-hist

quinncom• 4 months ago

You can try McFly [1] and Television [2]. I still prefer fzf.

[1] https://github.com/cantino/mcfly

[2] https://github.com/alexpasmantier/television

colesantiago• 4 months ago

As soon as a tool adds pricing, price increases or adds AI that's when it begins to be enshittified.

Why does this happen mostly?

evandrofisico2• 4 months ago

Yep, out of precaution i've never used their sync infrastructure, which I guess was reasonably cheap to run, but the moment you add LLMs to the mix it is obvious that they are in for the free VC money and are soon going to need a lot of investment to keep the lights on.

mijoharas• 4 months ago

The thing I found frustrating was I wanted to merge changes with just files without their sync server (i.e. just import this other atuin sqlite dB) so I raised a PR to support that.

They closed it (which is fine) but there is no offline migrate alternative.

It's a shame, and fair enough, their project, but I don't think my wishes and the projects are very aligned.

I keep half meaning to move back to zsh-histdb (I think that's what it was called) but haven't found an impetus to.

I'll probably check if there's a file based sync option next time I switch machines and decide then.

ilvez3• 4 months ago

It's MIT licensed software, Noone will turn off lights. Community can take over or fork.

mpalmer2• 4 months ago

I was already turned off by their decision to remove support for fzf, which I use everywhere else. I'm done.

ellieh• 4 months ago

I’m not sure what you mean here - we never supported fzf, other than a super early prototype in like 2021

This release actually adds support for nucleo, which matches with the same algorithm as fzf and was a common request

evandrofisico2• 4 months ago

About the "ai", the announcement is very vague. Is this incorporating a local model on device, something running on your infrastructure or a third party model like Claude? Because to me nowadays adding AI on anything usually means higher running costs equals sooner or latter enshittification.

mpalmer2• 4 months ago

Hey, thanks for responding. I guess I used the prototype then. Definitely don't remember anyone saying "this is a prototype" at the time, so I took the product at face value, and part of the reason I chose it was the fzf support.

I'm sure I recall some unhappy GitHub issues about the shift away...

And the algorithm isn't the value prop for me, not by a long shot. fzf's customizability takes the cake. And now the overall product is way too big and feature-ful for me. I want simple, unix-y software that clicks together like Lego.

You should be proud of the project's success for sure, it's just not for me!

duskdozer2• 4 months ago

I was really pleased finding this last year, but I guess it's time to look for an alternative. I don't get why everything has to have AI shoved into it

Bnjoroge4• 4 months ago

It’s optional- you can choose to opt in or not.

ramon156• 4 months ago

Its also the Repo. There's a lot of AI-guided commits. I'm all for using AI in a reliable and safe environment, but letting Claude steer just leads to garbage

imiric3• 4 months ago

That's a poor argument that doesn't change the fact that any feature requires maintenance time and effort which for some users could be better invested in features they actually use, in improving overall stability, reliability, performance, etc. The more such unused features a product has, the less relevant it is for those users.

The question is, was adding "AI" to this product requested by most users, or was it done to tick off a marketing checkbox and capitalize on the hype?

arcadianalpaca• 4 months ago

Right, though looking at the release notes it seems like the AI part at least is opt-in... for now.

duskdozer2• 4 months ago

For now. But looking at the repo, they're already having commits done by claude.

wswope3• 4 months ago

Not to detract from your point, but I decided Atuin was feature complete enough for my liking over two years ago, and have been running the last v17 release ever since with zero problems.

You can still keep everything you like about the tool without issue, and to the devs’ credit, the sync server is some of the easiest software to self-host possible.

theusus2• 4 months ago

All I want is auto complete for the commands on Windows. And none provides

imiric3• 4 months ago

Take a look at clink[1]. Or use PowerShell.

[1] https://chrisant996.github.io/clink/

theusus2• 4 months ago

I do use powershell but it doesn’t provide auto complete for commands. I repeat I don’t want history. I want commands or args suggestions. Just like zsh auto complete

Myzel3942• 4 months ago

I'm still looking forward to being able to only remember a command for a specific time. I currently block sensitive commands, which completely destroys the ability to just press the up arrow key to quickly edit the command. If we had like a timeout of 1 minute for sensitive commands, we could edit them and still make sure they are not persistent

BinaryMuse3• 4 months ago

I really like this idea — might give an implementation a shot

skulk• 4 months ago

zsh doesn't add commands that start with a space to stored history. So you can up arrow recall them but once you exit the session they're gone.

semiquaver• 4 months ago

I’m baffled by how bitter and angry the comments are. Atuin is one of my favorite everyday tools and this release sounds great!

Myzel3942• 4 months ago

atuin ai kinda reminds me of https://github.com/Myzel394/zsh-copilot (yes, that's by me :P)

anamexis3• 4 months ago

And reminds me of my take: https://github.com/micahbf/halp

Excited to use atuin ai though, especially as it gets more features.

breuleux• 4 months ago

And my take! A fork of fish where any command that starts with > or a capital letter is fed to $fish_llm_command: https://github.com/breuleux/fish-shell. With Claude's help, that took all of 30 minutes to make.

thehours2• 4 months ago

The PTY proxy looks pretty neat! Excited to give that a try.

Losing some of the scrollback was a minor nuisance that I kind of lived with until now.

ilvez3• 4 months ago

I've always felt this fullscreen was too much for actual use. Eager to try it out.

ilvez3• 4 months ago

Just for random passers by:

I was using: eval "$(atuin init zsh --disable-up-arrow)"

Now need to workaround: eval "$(atuin hex init | sed 's/atuin init zsh/atuin init zsh --disable-up-arrow/')"

Probably should create a issue in tracker to point out that this use-case is currently not supported :)

thehours2• 4 months ago

Update: I gave it a try and it does exactly what I hoped. However one (minor) annoyance I immediately realized was that with `hex` enabled I will get this warning whenever I close the terminal window:

The terminal still has a running process. If you close the terminal the process will be killed.

Hopefully there is a workaround for this (I'm using then Ghostty emulator).

jauntywundrkind2• 4 months ago

Release notes have PR #'s but they aren't links. Would be great to linkify, so folks can more easily dive into bits that catch their eye.

fragmede• 4 months ago

I had Claude write me fundcli, which goes over your atuin shell history and suggests places to donate to.

https://github.com/fragmede/fundcli

DavideNL2• 4 months ago

For those wondering, it seems version 18.12.1 was the latest version without the AI feature...

https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin/releases/tag/v18.12.1

Personally I'll keep using this version for a while until i find something better.

DavideNL2• 4 months ago

Note that the database format of 18.13 is not compatible with 18.12.1, so if you already had 18.13 running you need to remove the data and reimport your shell history.

    brew remove atuin
    brew tap --force homebrew/core
    brew version-install atuin@18.12.1
    brew untap homebrew/core

I just reinstalled completely, by deleting the folder:

    ~/.local/share/atuin

then run `atuin import`.

Downgrade your atuin server to 18.12.1 and run the sync setup on your client(s): https://docs.atuin.sh/cli/guide/sync/

ezst2• 4 months ago

I never found a satisfying search algotithm with atuin (iterating over time between fuzzy, skim, fulltext, and maybe others). Is there one that is both:

- case insensitive (e.g. inputting "make" matches ("make install", "vim Makefile")

- works on partial matches (e.g. inputting "ma in" matches ("make install", "cd main")

BinaryMuse3• 4 months ago

The new "daemon-fuzzy" mode uses a new fuzzy matcher powered by Nucleo and might be what you're looking for

ezst2• 4 months ago

it seems indeed better in some ways, but the scoring is still way off,

for example, for my second criteria:

- works on partial matches (e.g. inputting "ma in" matches ("make install", "cd main")

typing "ma in" I would expect "make install" to come before "cd main" to come before (what's currently the very first hit) "cd Binaries/Multimedia".

I'm now reading about https://docs.atuin.sh/cli/configuration/config/?h=fuzzy+daem... while not managing to really get what would seem natural. Sigh.

Atuin v18.13 – better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell

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