https://kau.sh/blog/usbi/

A terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad

September 15, 2025

now includes macOS Tahoe support

Apple slightly altered the system command for Tahoe

You have a drawer full of USB cables. Half are junk that barely
charge your phone. The other half transfer data at full speed. But
which is which?

Android Studio solved this. Recent versions warn you when you connect
a slow cable to your phone:

            Android Studio Warningdevelopers.android.com

I wanted this for the command line. So I "built"^1 usbi, a script to
check your USB connections.

The script parses macOS's system_profiler SPUSBHostDataType^2
command, which produces a dense, hard-to-scan raw output:

raw output form macos command

With a little bit of scripting, the output becomes much cleaner:

usbi --speed output sample

When I connect my Pixel^3:

usbi output with pixel phone attached

Quick notes on the vibe-coding experience

The first version was a bash script I cobbled together with AI. It
worked, but was a mess to maintain. Because I let AI take the wheel,
even minor tweaks like changing output colors were difficult.

Second time around, I decided to vibe-code again but asked AI to
rewrite the entire thing in Go. I chose Go because I felt I could
structure the code more legibly and tweaks would be easier to follow.
Go also has the unique ability to compile a cross-platform binary,
which I can run on any machine.

But perhaps the biggest reason is, it took me a grand total of 10
minutes to have AI rewrite the entire thing. I was punching through
my email actively as Claude was chugging on the side.

Two years ago, I wouldn't have bothered with the rewrite, let alone
creating the script in the first place. The friction was too high.
Now, small utility scripts like this are almost free to build.

That's the real story. Not the script, but how AI changes the
calculus of what's worth our time.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

 1. yes, vibe coded. Shamelessly, I might add. -[?]

 2. prevoius versoins of macOS used SPUSBDataType -[?]

 3. I had Claude pull specs for the most common Pixel phones. I'll do
    the same for iPhones if I ever switch back. -[?]

    

  * #tech
  * #cli
  * #shell
  * #ai
  * #vibe-coding

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