shellwise

_{Tab/⇧Tab navigate · → accept inline · Enter run · Esc dismiss — ranked by frecency: how often × how recently you run it}

Enter always runs what you typed. Suggestions never hijack your command — press Tab to step into the list only when you actually want one.

Why shellwise?

• Suggestions that learn you — your real history, ranked by frecency (frequency × recency), so the commands you actually use float to the top and stale ones fade.
• Instant, zero-fork — a persistent daemon answers every keystroke in ~1–3 ms over a Unix socket. No subprocess is ever spawned while you type.
• No Ctrl+R required — see matches inline as you type. (Ctrl+R is still there for full-screen fuzzy search when you want it.)
• Private & local — everything lives in a SQLite file on your machine, reached through a 0600 Unix socket. Nothing leaves your computer.
• Zero config — one install, shell integration auto-injected, done.

How it compares

All of these are excellent tools — the difference is where the suggestions live:

TL;DR — if you want encrypted history sync across machines, use atuin. If you want a ranked dropdown under your prompt as you type — no keybind, no context switch — that's shellwise.

Features

Install

This is a CLI tool — install it globally.

# Homebrew (recommended — standalone binary, nothing else to install)
brew install kurovu146/tap/shellwise

# Bun (requires Bun ≥ 1.0)
bun install -g shellwise

# npm (requires Bun ≥ 1.0 as the runtime)
npm install -g shellwise

The Homebrew formula (and the tarballs on GitHub Releases) ship a self-contained binary — you do not need Bun, Node, or any other runtime.

Shell integration is auto-injected into your ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc. Open a new terminal (or source your rc file) to activate.

# ~/.zshrc
eval "$(shellwise init zsh)"

# ~/.bashrc
eval "$(shellwise init bash)"

Usage

Just start typing. After 2+ characters, suggestions from your history appear inline.

While typing (zsh)

Interactive search (Ctrl+R)

Commands

Both shellwise and the short alias sw work:

sw search [--query <text>]     # Interactive fuzzy search (same as Ctrl+R)
sw delete [query]              # Interactively search & delete an entry
sw import [zsh|bash]           # Import your existing shell history
sw stats                       # Usage statistics
sw prune --days <n>            # Remove entries older than n days
sw daemon start|stop|status    # Manage the background daemon
sw version                     # Show version (and notify if an update exists)

sw import zsh      # from ~/.zsh_history
sw import bash     # from ~/.bash_history

sw delete          # browse all, pick one to delete
sw delete git      # pre-filter with "git"
sw prune --days 90 # drop everything older than 90 days

How it works

┌──────────────┐   Unix socket · ~1–3 ms   ┌────────────────────┐
│  Zsh / Bash  │ ◄═══════════════════════► │ shellwise daemon   │
└──────────────┘                           └──────────┬─────────┘
                                                      │
                                           ┌──────────▼─────────┐
                                           │  SQLite (WAL)      │
                                           │  history.db        │
                                           └────────────────────┘

• Shell hooks (preexec/precmd) capture each command after it runs.
• A persistent Unix-socket connection is opened once at shell init and reused for every keystroke — zero forks while typing.
• The daemon pre-warms prepared SQLite statements for instant lookups.
• Frecency = frequency × recency_weight, evaluated at query time so recency keeps decaying without any background job.
• The daemon idles out after 30 min and the shell reconnects on demand.

Data & privacy

Everything is local to your machine:

~/.local/share/shellwise/history.db    # your history (SQLite)
~/.config/shellwise/                   # config (reserved)
/tmp/shellwise-<uid>.sock              # Unix socket  (mode 0600)
/tmp/shellwise-<uid>.pid               # daemon PID   (mode 0600)

Requirements

• macOS or Linux
• Zsh (full experience) or Bash (auto-save + Ctrl+R search)
• Bun ≥ 1.0.0 — only when installing via bun/npm. The Homebrew and GitHub-release binaries are standalone.

Update

sw version and sw stats tell you when a new release is out.

brew upgrade shellwise
bun install -g shellwise@latest
npm install -g shellwise@latest

Uninstall

brew uninstall shellwise      # or: bun remove -g shellwise / npm uninstall -g shellwise

Shell integration is removed automatically. If a stray line remains, delete it from your ~/.zshrc / ~/.bashrc:

# shellwise shell integration
eval "$(shellwise init zsh)"

Remove all stored data:

rm -rf ~/.local/share/shellwise

License

MIT Vu Duc Tuan