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Shifu

A pure POSIX shell framework to create powerful CLIs

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The startup I work for has an internal, bash-based, cli that basically amounts to shared aliases with a common entrypoint. As the number of aliases has grown, I've had a desire to group functionality together in subcommands, add more help strings, and have better tab completion. I know I could convert it to, e.g., a python script, but I was curious what was possible if we continued to use bash.I couldn't find anything that solved those problems without lots of extra machinery. I understand why, shell scripts are generally not long, and focused on a dedicated task; adding cli features to them is mostly unnecessary, many might even discourage it for many valid reasons.Nonetheless, I considered writing this functionality myself, but that felt like a poor use of company time. So I started toying with what a framework to handle those concerns entirely in shell script would look like on the side. Thus, shifu was born. I've been working on it off and on for about a year, and think I've got a reasonable alpha release, so thought I'd share.

HN · launched Mar 30, 2026 · 7 upvotes (top 59%) · 0 views

Niche: developer command-line tools · 226 launches, 5 in the last 7 days ▼ -67% · Explore this niche →

Category and tags

  • Horizontal
  • Dev tools
  • Developer
  • Not AI
  • Hobby / open-source project

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

Could you build this?

Yes A pure POSIX shell framework for CLI subcommands and completions is a self-contained shell scripting library that an AI coding assistant excels at writing.

Discussion

2 comments analyzed.

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 228 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #140 of 229 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 145 days after the earliest competitor.

  • Pu.sh · hn · 2026-04-30 · 92 upvotes · similarity 0.50
  • Ced · hn · 2026-05-07 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.49
  • ShellTalk brings deterministic text-to-bash · hn · 2026-04-22 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.48
  • Crust · hn · 2026-03-17 · 95 upvotes · similarity 0.47
  • Kosh · hn · 2026-08-28 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.46
  • Bashr.run · ph · 2026-10-31 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.46
  • Shuck · hn · 2026-04-30 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.46
  • CLI-use · hn · 2026-04-21 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.45

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