An interactive cheatsheet tool for the command-line so that you'll never say the following again:

— How to run that command again?
— Oh, it's not in my bash history
— Geez, it's almost what I wanted but I need to change some args

navi allows you to browse through cheatsheets (that you may write yourself or download from maintainers) and execute commands, prompting for argument values.

• Installation
  • Using Homebrew or Linuxbrew
  • Using git
• Upgrading
• Usage
  • Preventing execution
  • Pre-filtering
  • Searching online repositories
  • More options
• Trying out online
• Motivation
• Cheatsheets
  • Using your own custom cheatsheets
  • Submitting cheatsheets
• Cheatsheet syntax
  • Syntax overview
  • Variables
  • FZF options
• Related projects
• Etymology

You can use Homebrew or Linuxbrew to install navi:

brew install denisidoro/tools/navi

Alternatively, you can git clone this repository and run make:

git clone --depth 1 http://github.com/denisidoro/navi /opt/navi
cd /opt/navi
sudo make install
# install fzf: https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

navi is being actively developed and you might want to upgrade it once in a while. Please follow the instruction below depending on the installation method used:

• brew: brew update; brew reinstall navi
• git: cd /opt/navi && sudo make update

By simply running navi you will be prompted with the default cheatsheets.

If you run navi --print, the selected command won't be executed. It will be printed to stdout instead.

If you run navi query <cmd>, the results will be pre-filtered.

If you run navi search <cmd>, navi will try to download cheatsheets from online repositories as well.

Please note that these cheatsheets aren't curated by navi's maintainers and should be taken with a grain of salt. If you're not sure about executing these commands, make sure to check the preview window or use the --print option.

Please refer to navi --help for more details.

If you don't have access to bash at the moment and you want to live preview navi, head to this playground. It'll start a docker container with instructions for you to install and use the tool. Note: login required.

The main objectives are:

• to increase discoverability, by finding commands given keywords or descriptions;
• to prevent you from running auxiliar commands, copying the result into the clipboard and then pasting into the original command;
• to easily share one-liners with others so that they don't need to figure out how to write the commands;
• to improve terminal usage as a whole.

Sure, you can find autocompleters out there for all your favorite commands. However, they are very specific and each one may offer a different learning curve.

Or you can launch a browser and search for instructions on Google, but that takes some time.

navi, on the other hand, intends to be a general purpose platform for bookmarking any command at a very low cost.

In this case, you need to pass a :-separated list of separated directories which contain .cheat files:

navi --path "/folder/with/cheats"

Alternatively, you can set an environment variable in your .bashrc-like file:

export NAVI_PATH="/folder/with/cheats:/another/folder"

Feel free to fork this project and open a PR for me to include your contributions.

Cheatsheets are described in .cheat files.

• lines starting with % should contain tags which will be added to any command in a given file;
• lines starting with # should be descriptions of commands;
• lines starting with $ should contain commands that generate a list of possible values for a given argument;
• all the other non-empty lines are considered as executable commands.

For example, this is a valid .cheat file:

% git, code

# Change branch
git checkout <branch>

$ branch: git branch | awk '{print $NF}'

The interface prompts for variable names inside brackets (eg <branch>).

The command for generating possible inputs can refer other variables:

# If you select 2 for x, the possible values of y will be 12 and 22
echo <x> <y>

$ x: echo -e '1\n2\n3'
$ y: echo -e "$((x+10))\n$((x+20))"

You can make pick a specific column of a selection and set the number of lines considered as headers:

# This will pick the 3rd column and use the first line as header
docker rmi <image_id>

$ image_id: docker images --- --headers 1 --column 3

There are many similar projects out there (bro, eg, cheat.sh, tldr, cmdmenu, cheat, beavr, how2 and howdoi, to name a few).

Most of them provide excellent cheatsheet repositories, but lack a nice UI.

In any case, navi has the option to search for some of these repositories.

In The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, navi is a character that provides Link with a variety of clues to help him solve puzzles and progress in his quest.