Terminal Workflows

Expert guidance for terminal command execution and shell workflows.

Command Execution Patterns

Safe Execution

Always prefer:

1. Read operations first - Understand before modifying
2. Dry-run flags - Use --dry-run, -n when available
3. Confirmation prompts - Add -i for interactive confirmation
4. Limited scope - Be specific, avoid wildcards when possible

Command Chaining

# Sequential (stop on failure)
cmd1 && cmd2 && cmd3

# Sequential (continue on failure)
cmd1; cmd2; cmd3

# Conditional
cmd1 && cmd2 || cmd3  # cmd3 runs if cmd1 or cmd2 fails

# Pipeline
cmd1 | cmd2 | cmd3

Output Handling

# Capture stdout
result=$(command)

# Redirect stderr to stdout
command 2>&1

# Discard output
command > /dev/null 2>&1

# Tee to file and stdout
command | tee output.log

Common Workflows

File Discovery

# Find by name
find . -name "*.py" -type f

# Find by content
grep -r "pattern" --include="*.js"

# Find recent files
find . -mtime -7 -type f

# Find large files
find . -size +100M -type f

Text Processing

# Extract column
awk '{print $2}' file

# Filter lines
grep "pattern" file

# Replace text
sed 's/old/new/g' file

# Count occurrences
grep -c "pattern" file

# Sort and unique
sort file | uniq -c | sort -rn

Process Management

# Find process
ps aux | grep "name"

# Kill by name
pkill -f "pattern"

# Background job
command &

# Check port usage
lsof -i :8080

Error Handling

Check Command Availability

command -v git > /dev/null || echo "git not installed"
which python3 || which python

Handle Missing Files

[ -f file.txt ] && cat file.txt || echo "File not found"

Timeout Protection

timeout 30 long_running_command

Best Practices

1. Quote variables: "$var" not $var
2. Use absolute paths when possible
3. Check exit codes: $? after commands
4. Limit output: Use head, tail, or | head -n 100
5. Avoid destructive commands without confirmation

Permission Escalation

If a command fails due to permissions in allowlist mode:

1. Check if command should be in allowlist
2. Use /permissions mode ask to enable prompting
3. Approve specific command with /permissions approve <cmd>
4. Or add to config for permanent access

Platform Differences