[HN Gopher] Atuin v18.13 - better search, a PTY proxy, and AI fo...
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Atuin v18.13 - better search, a PTY proxy, and AI for your shell
Author : cenanozen
Score : 82 points
Date : 2026-03-21 10:35 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.atuin.sh)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.atuin.sh)
| GardenLetter27 wrote:
| Atuin is great. This, fish, LazyGit, and zellij are mandatory for
| me now.
| h4ch1 wrote:
| what does zellij offer that tmux doesn't?
|
| I love tmux and haven't had a reason to switch for a while, but
| have heard these new Rust based terminal tooling get really
| popular.
| zenoprax wrote:
| If all you need is basic splits, sessions, and some simple
| templates/layouts (and like the convenience of knowing that
| tmux is widely available, and often installed by default)
| then you're fine to stay on tmux.
|
| Zellij can do things like floating windows, contextual
| keybinding guidance (helps learn everything that can be
| done), and a more complex layout schema. You can disable all
| the UI eye-candy and switch to tmux-style bindings too.
|
| It's worth trying out. I use both so that I can still
| function on systems without it.
| wredcoll wrote:
| Wait, tmux doesn't have floating windows? I really thought
| it did...
| n8henrie wrote:
| A ton more conflicting keybindings.
|
| I switched away from tmux a year or so ago due to one crash I
| kept getting, but thinking of going back. Really miss the
| simplicity.
| jxdxbx wrote:
| It's hard to use in so many apps unless you lock the
| keyboard.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| If you are comparing raw features, there is probably little
| to differentiate vs a legacy tool. However, the out of the
| box experience is fantastic, and the author has clearly put a
| lot of effort in their take without being locked into legacy
| decisions.
|
| If you watch some of the screencasts and are not impressed,
| there is nothing more I can do to pitch the idea. My only
| complaint is that I feel like I am only ever scratching the
| surface of what the tool can offer.
|
| https://zellij.dev/tutorials/basic-functionality/
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Atuin AI sounds like a useful addition. The page suggests they're
| probably using hosted models: We use the latest
| frontier models, which already do a good job of generating
| commands using well-known binaries and CLIs. On top of that, we
| integrate a dataset powered by man pages and command outputs to
| ensure you get the correct command first.
|
| This is great, but does it mean we'll need to log in somehow? It
| doesn't seem reasonable to expect the project maintainers to pay
| for the tokens.
|
| EDIT: I was unaware of Atuin's 'hub' which does things like sync
| your shell history across computers. I think they use the same
| sign-in as they already use for that:
| https://hub.atuin.sh/register
| embedding-shape wrote:
| This part:
|
| > On top of that, we integrate a dataset powered by man pages
| and command outputs to ensure you get the correct command
| first.
|
| Also makes it sound like they're "providing that dataset",
| rather than generating that from the users computer. Wouldn't
| that mean it's potentially a mismatch between various versions
| of the software available? Not to mention some OSes will have a
| different version of some software available compared to
| others, how does it deal with those situations if they're
| shipping a dataset?
| _ache_ wrote:
| There is no way is it not generated on user computer.
|
| "get the correct command first" and "shipping a [external]
| dataset" are incompatible.
| anamexis wrote:
| The Data Privacy paragraph would suggest otherwise.
|
| > By default, Atuin AI knows nothing about your machine,
| other than the operating system and shell. This is the bare
| minimum required to generate a decent shell command.
|
| > It will soon be able to ask you for access to more data -
| such as the current directory path, contents, git status,
| etc - but you must give permission first. This will happen
| in a similar way to existing agents, and be configurable to
| an even finer degree in your config file.
| lta wrote:
| Why does every tool on the face of earth try to add AI features ?
| Good tools are simple and orthogonal. If you want AI, there's
| already plenty of other tools doing it probably better.
|
| I'm overall fairly disappointed by this announcement. This IMHO
| doesn't bode well
| Bnjoroge wrote:
| It's fine - I like the introduction of AI. It's optional - if
| you don't want it, turn it off or don't use it
| righthand wrote:
| AI features are the new Electron app. Welcome to the new hell,
| please finish installing your 10 different inference engines,
| one for each app.
| qudat wrote:
| If you want VC money you need to put an AI spin on it.
| tootie wrote:
| Product is free, open source and largely written and
| maintained by one person. Doesn't seem like a startup payday
| scheme.
| dc_giant wrote:
| Hmm might be great for some. I'm a Unix philosophy guy, one tool
| for one job. So far atuin was fine to be a better search history.
| Now it might be time to look for simpler alternative. Any
| suggestions? (I'm on zsh)
| justech wrote:
| I tried atuin and then switched back to fzf[0]. It's less
| features but that's not necessarily a negative.
|
| [0]https://github.com/junegunn/fzf
| kstrauser wrote:
| Fzf doesn't let you sync your shell history, though. I self-
| host an Atuin server so that I can share that history across
| my various machines.
| doubled112 wrote:
| I also self host my own atuin server. It's great.
|
| I didn't think syncing terminal history would be very
| useful until I tried it, but now I have a hard time when I
| don't have it.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That was my experience. "Huh, what was that complicate
| thing I did on the database server?"
|
| I have its search bound to ^r and use Fish shell's own
| search for most things, with cross-machine search a
| keystroke away.
| stevekemp wrote:
| To be honest I find the things I do on my "work" laptop are
| different to the things I do on my "personal" laptop, and
| different again to what I do on my desktop machine.
|
| Regardless of which machine I'm using at any given moment I
| appreciate having "endless history", and the ability to
| search/filter it. But despite that I don't think I need to
| actual sync that.
|
| I'm sure there is value to be had from syncing and making
| all history unified, but it's never appealed to me
| particularly.
| justech wrote:
| Yeah, that's part of the "less features" I mentioned. I
| don't get any value from syncing shell history, but I can
| see why it's useful for some.
| dc_giant wrote:
| Yup already using fzf for other things will probably just go
| back for search history too.
| prashantv wrote:
| I personally prefer the fzf UX, but I liked atuin's better
| tracking of history and sync abilities so I combined them:
| https://github.com/prashantv/atuin-fzf
| grosswait wrote:
| AI appears to be opt in
| anamexis wrote:
| I have to ask -- why? Atuin has not gotten any worse at its
| core history search functionality. All of the new features are
| entirely opt-in. Why switch?
| dc_giant wrote:
| Because to me it feels like it gets more complex in ways I
| don't like. It's a matter of preference. To be honest had I
| not read about it I might have never noticed it but now I
| know and will probably go back to fzf.
| dcre wrote:
| What here takes them over the complexity threshold?
| hakcermani wrote:
| not zsh .. plugging my bash script [1] (and gnome task bar UI)
| - to start a gnome terminal with a different named history
| file. [1]: https://github.com/appsmatics/gtsh-hist
| quinncom wrote:
| You can try McFly [1] and Television [2]. I still prefer fzf.
|
| [1] https://github.com/cantino/mcfly
|
| [2] https://github.com/alexpasmantier/television
| colesantiago wrote:
| As soon as a tool adds pricing, price increases or adds AI that's
| when it begins to be enshittified.
|
| Why does this happen mostly?
| evandrofisico wrote:
| Yep, out of precaution i've never used their sync
| infrastructure, which I guess was reasonably cheap to run, but
| the moment you add LLMs to the mix it is obvious that they are
| in for the free VC money and are soon going to need a lot of
| investment to keep the lights on.
| mijoharas wrote:
| The thing I found frustrating was I wanted to merge changes
| with just files without their sync server (i.e. just import
| this other atuin sqlite dB) so I raised a PR to support that.
|
| They closed it (which is fine) but there is no offline
| migrate alternative.
|
| It's a shame, and fair enough, their project, but I don't
| think my wishes and the projects are very aligned.
|
| I keep half meaning to move back to zsh-histdb (I think
| that's what it was called) but haven't found an impetus to.
|
| I'll probably check if there's a file based sync option next
| time I switch machines and decide then.
| wswope wrote:
| > They closed it (which is fine) but there is no offline
| migrate alternative.
|
| If it helps, you can copy the history table from one db to
| another in 3 simple lines of sqlite. I've done it myself a
| few times with zero fuss.
| ilvez wrote:
| It's MIT licensed software, Noone will turn off lights.
| Community can take over or fork.
| mpalmer wrote:
| I was already turned off by their decision to remove support for
| fzf, which I use everywhere else. I'm done.
| ellieh wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean here - we never supported fzf, other
| than a super early prototype in like 2021
|
| This release actually adds support for nucleo, which matches
| with the same algorithm as fzf and was a common request
| evandrofisico wrote:
| About the "ai", the announcement is very vague. Is this
| incorporating a local model on device, something running on
| your infrastructure or a third party model like Claude?
| Because to me nowadays adding AI on anything usually means
| higher running costs equals sooner or latter
| enshittification.
| mpalmer wrote:
| Hey, thanks for responding. I guess I used the prototype
| then. Definitely don't remember anyone saying "this is a
| prototype" at the time, so I took the product at face value,
| and part of the reason I chose it was the fzf support.
|
| I'm sure I recall some unhappy GitHub issues about the shift
| away...
|
| And the algorithm isn't the value prop for me, not by a long
| shot. fzf's customizability takes the cake. And now the
| overall product is way too big and feature-ful for me. I want
| simple, unix-y software that clicks together like Lego.
|
| You should be proud of the project's success for sure, it's
| just not for me!
| duskdozer wrote:
| I was really pleased finding this last year, but I guess it's
| time to look for an alternative. I don't get why everything has
| to have AI shoved into it
| Bnjoroge wrote:
| It's optional- you can choose to opt in or not.
| ramon156 wrote:
| Its also the Repo. There's a lot of AI-guided commits. I'm
| all for using AI in a reliable and safe environment, but
| letting Claude steer just leads to garbage
| stingraycharles wrote:
| I took a look at the repo, but i didn't see any garbage
| commits / evidence of sloppy vibe coding.
|
| Care to elaborate? Also, don't you trust that an author
| knows what they're doing with AI in the same way as
| trusting them with their regular code writing skills?
| Bnjoroge wrote:
| I've read and used some of the author's software. I trust
| them to make good judgement of using AI.
| quanwinn wrote:
| Using AI to code doesn't automatically mean bad code.
| Although I suspect the majority of AI code will be subpar.
| TechSquidTV wrote:
| So to be clear. You have no tangible complaints about the
| software or its quality, but you are dismissing it because
| of the potential for poor quality, because AI was
| assisting?
| imiric wrote:
| That's a poor argument that doesn't change the fact that any
| feature requires maintenance time and effort which for some
| users could be better invested in features they actually use,
| in improving overall stability, reliability, performance,
| etc. The more such unused features a product has, the less
| relevant it is for those users.
|
| The question is, was adding "AI" to this product requested by
| most users, or was it done to tick off a marketing checkbox
| and capitalize on the hype?
| wswope wrote:
| What stability, reliability, and performance problems are
| you hitting with Atuin?
|
| I posted a longer comment upthread, but I've been self-
| hosting and running an old version for over two years now,
| and haven't had any recurring problems on those fronts.
| It's pretty damn stable software and everything they've
| been doing lately has just been extra features and gloss.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| It's open source software, so this attitude of "the work
| hours have to be spent how I want them to be spent" feels
| rather icky to me.
|
| There's also a very weak souled scarcity mentality. It
| feels like you are working to take umbrage, to come up with
| outrage. Some users do find these features good and useful.
| That should be celebrated. Demanding features _not_ be
| present? That 's so condescending.
| imiric wrote:
| OSS is not immune to enshittification, and, in fact, is
| prone to it. It's not entitled to have the opinion that a
| piece of software might be heading in the wrong
| direction. Paying for software doesn't somehow buy you
| this right. What's icky to me is the idea that the
| opinion of users who support the author financially is
| more valuable than of those who don't, which goes against
| the entire ideal of open source.
|
| Besides, VC-funded OSS often prioritizes the needs of its
| shareholders rather than its users. If you find these
| features useful, that's great. But there's no reason that
| they should be universally celebrated. The authors might
| want to listen to all viewpoints.
| cweagans wrote:
| "I want this feature" and "I want this feature to not
| exist" are fundamentally incompatible viewpoints when
| applied to any given feature. It seems like adding that
| feature and making it opt-in is a good middle ground. The
| people that want it can have it and the people who don't
| want it can pretend it doesn't exist. This outcome seems
| like the result of listening to all viewpoints, so I'm
| not sure what problem you're trying to point out.
| Bnjoroge wrote:
| Atuin is open source. You dont like their new release? Fork
| the previous repo, and customize it however you want.
| That's the whole essence of open source.
| arcadianalpaca wrote:
| Right, though looking at the release notes it seems like the AI
| part at least is opt-in... for now.
| duskdozer wrote:
| For now. But looking at the repo, they're already having
| commits done by claude.
| dcre wrote:
| I looked at the repo and couldn't even find an example, so
| it can't be that many of their commits. But also: this is
| ridiculous. Whether the commit appears as done by Claude or
| not is a setting you can change. If they turned it off,
| you'd never even notice.
|
| These are great developers and they've built an incredible
| tool. I use it a hundred times a day. It is very odd and
| dogmatic to think that because you saw a commit authored by
| Claude, whatever skills and qualities let them build
| something so good are now being thrown out.
|
| Edit: I found one:
| https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin/pull/3231
|
| Please, tell me where the bad code is in that PR. I see 200
| lines of extremely straightforward Rust and 500 lines of
| tests for it.
| baq wrote:
| And this is bad why?
| wswope wrote:
| Not to detract from your point, but I decided Atuin was feature
| complete enough for my liking over two years ago, and have been
| running the last v17 release ever since with zero problems.
|
| You can still keep everything you like about the tool without
| issue, and to the devs' credit, the sync server is some of the
| easiest software to self-host possible.
| theusus wrote:
| All I want is auto complete for the commands on Windows. And none
| provides
| imiric wrote:
| Take a look at clink[1]. Or use PowerShell.
|
| [1]: https://chrisant996.github.io/clink/
| theusus wrote:
| I do use powershell but it doesn't provide auto complete for
| commands. I repeat I don't want history. I want commands or
| args suggestions. Just like zsh auto complete
| Myzel394 wrote:
| I'm still looking forward to being able to only remember a
| command for a specific time. I currently block sensitive
| commands, which completely destroys the ability to just press the
| up arrow key to quickly edit the command. If we had like a
| timeout of 1 minute for sensitive commands, we could edit them
| and still make sure they are not persistent
| BinaryMuse wrote:
| I really like this idea -- might give an implementation a shot
| skulk wrote:
| zsh doesn't add commands that start with a space to stored
| history. So you can up arrow recall them but once you exit the
| session they're gone.
| semiquaver wrote:
| I'm baffled by how bitter and angry the comments are. Atuin is
| one of my favorite everyday tools and this release sounds great!
| Myzel394 wrote:
| atuin ai kinda reminds me of https://github.com/Myzel394/zsh-
| copilot (yes, that's by me :P)
| anamexis wrote:
| And reminds me of my take: https://github.com/micahbf/halp
|
| Excited to use atuin ai though, especially as it gets more
| features.
| breuleux wrote:
| And my take! A fork of fish where any command that starts
| with > or a capital letter is fed to $fish_llm_command:
| https://github.com/breuleux/fish-shell. With Claude's help,
| that took all of 30 minutes to make.
| thehours wrote:
| The PTY proxy looks pretty neat! Excited to give that a try.
|
| Losing some of the scrollback was a minor nuisance that I kind of
| lived with until now.
| ilvez wrote:
| I've always felt this fullscreen was too much for actual use.
| Eager to try it out.
| thehours wrote:
| Update: I gave it a try and it does exactly what I hoped.
| However one (minor) annoyance I immediately realized was that
| with `hex` enabled I will get this warning whenever I close the
| terminal window:
|
| > The terminal still has a running process. If you close the
| terminal the process will be killed.
|
| Hopefully there is a workaround for this (I'm using then
| Ghostty emulator).
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Release notes have PR #'s but they aren't links. Would be great
| to linkify, so folks can more easily dive into bits that catch
| their eye.
| fragmede wrote:
| I had Claude write me fundcli, which goes over your atuin shell
| history and suggests places to donate to.
|
| https://github.com/fragmede/fundcli
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(page generated 2026-03-21 23:01 UTC)