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Ask HN: What is your favorite lightweight tool or CLI utility in 2026?
19 points by pranav_tech26 a day ago | 31 comments

Tools like ripgrep, fzf, and htop have saved me countless hours over the years. What small utilities do you rely on daily?

wbnns 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

GitHub CLI -- I'm using it every day and just about anything I'd want to do on GitHub, I can do straight from the command line

https://cli.github.com/

charlie90 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Everything/es.exe for searching every file on disk, its nice for AI agents to use

gforce_de 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is https://github.com/voidtools/ES (a "locate" replacement for windows-computers)

BorisMelnik 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

grep + es.exe on windows is the only way to look for files

rft a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

ssh, scp, tmux, (grml-)zsh, grep, less, file, tar, git

The time saving of a well filled ~/.ssh/config is impressive, especially once you start juggling ProxyJump hops.

aborsy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Find, fzf, vim, ssh, …

vismit2000 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

dust: https://github.com/bootandy/dust - This has ben immensely useful for me

ddxv a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

ssh and scp just never fails to impress

-J for jumping -L for port forwarding -X for pulling remote applications to view on my laptop (waypipe for Wayland)

Adding all those, and ips and whatnot to .ssh/config so I just type:

ssh foo

aborsy 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

SFTP is just simpler and better, if available.

fragmede a day ago | parent | prev [-]

setup LocalCommand, in ~/.ssh/config, so your config files get copied to every server you connect to, so you have all your aliases and scripts.

rft a day ago | parent | next [-]

I intentionally avoid this, especially if I am not the only one connecting to a server. I see potentially breaking others' expectations for my convenience as a clear downside. Plus there is a level of paranoia there, I might have unintentionally included a credential in some config that gets copied over. That potentially increases the blast radius of a server compromise beyond what is strictly required for that specific server. I might copy over some scripts into a directory not in $PATH, easy enough to add it to my shell session if needed, CTRL+R helps as well.

fragmede a day ago | parent [-]

...why are you sharing user accounts in this day and age? Yes, absolutely, don't mess up the shared space everyone uses, but why are you sharing that space in the first place?

mmh0000 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I’m not saying yours does, but be careful with LocalCommand, it will often break rsync and other tools that use ssh behind the scenes.

scary-size 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://github.com/rupa/z (z - jump around)

nozzlegear a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Gotta be jujutsu. I've completely stopped using git and use jj everywhere instead. It works so much better for my workflow.

taf2 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

vim, ls , cd, grep, cat being close seconds

slang800 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

jq

rhysha a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

bearer-cli for static application security testing

illegalbyte2 a day ago | parent [-]

This looks great, thanks for sharing.

justsomehnguy a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

    user: pranav_tech26
    created: 16 hours ago
    karma: 7
absoluteunit1 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Was going to comment this as well.

Fresh account with two Ask HN questions that are bound to get replies

fragmede a day ago | parent | prev [-]

...yes?

justsomehnguy a day ago | parent [-]

No.

EDIT: also check their comment history.

fragmede a day ago | parent [-]

Would you mind just saying what you mean?

karlsefni a day ago | parent [-]

GP is probably implying it's a bot account doing some kind of engagement-farming.

argus95 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

leaf (Terminal Markdown previewer)

wseqyrku 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

rustc

mansi1010 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

screen

winrid 21 hours ago | parent [-]

Is there any advantage of screen over tmux? I've kind of switched, I don't see a reason to go back.

gforce_de 17 hours ago | parent [-]

screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

...and easy session sharing

soupspaces a day ago | parent | prev [-]

tmux tealdeer zoxide