ShellMate is a lightweight, open-source app that gives you superpowers in your Mac Terminal.
It will observe what you're doing and detect errors, suggest fixes, or even suggest the next command you haven't run yet but should.For developers, everything starts and ends in Terminal. You want to keep your hands on the keyboard, not reach for your mouse to go to ChatGPT. This is why we built ShellMate (at first, just for ourselves). It’s for devs that still use the Mac Terminal (like we do) and want an easy way to layer in AI assistance.
Shellmate gives you dynamic error correction and guidance seamlessly in the Mac Terminal while keeping you in the flow. You can:
- Use ShellMate to detect & fix errors.
- Ask ShellMate questions about your Mac Terminal context.
- Highlight text to call Shellmate's "attention" to a particular issue.
I hope you’re as excited about it as I am. I’d love your help in developing it further, which is why we’re open sourcing it. Contributions welcome!
Thanks for your interest and let me know what you think!@dash4u You can see in the demo-video (1 min 5 sec in) a multi-step process where ShellMate is walking me through several steps to run a python script:
Right now, the logic is pretty simple, but with Mac's Accessibility access, we're able to use prior Terminal context (even text that has scrolled off the screen) and prior commands to infer your current intent. That seems to be pretty effective at diagnosing the error you're experiencing in most cases.Does it work with 3rd party terminal emulators like Ghostty, Alacritty, Kitty, iTerm, etc. Almost nobody that I know uses the macOS Terminal due to its slow speed and lack of true color support, etc.I use this daily (Sam let me try it early since we work in the same incubator's offices) and it gives me helpful terminal suggestions without getting in the way.This app is truly a game changer for the day-to-day experience of an engineer.
I'm very accustomed to using the Linux terminal—in fact, I do everything within the terminal. There are always situations where I forget some commands, like fixing my keyboard layout or editing a video with ffmpeg. When I'm on my macOS device, I feel incredibly empowered in the terminal, as if I have infinite memory to recall all the important commands and arguments. I've noticed how much I rely on ShellMate for everyday tasks when I'm on Linux and don't have the app available. Thank you so much for the investment and effort put into developing an app like this.
@sodio @mary_dyer
