atuin

Shell history search with a daemon, directory-scoped up-arrow, tmux popups, a cyberdream theme, and the atuin AI inline command generator.

atuin replaces shell history search in fish, bash, and zsh. It also provides atuin ai inline, a natural-language command generator that the fish config binds to keys.

chezmoi runs in symlink mode, but private_ files are written as real files, so edits to ~/.config/atuin/config.toml do not reach the repo on their own. Copy them back with chezmoi re-add (or czs, see fish). None of the files are templates, and they apply on every role.

Installation

atuin is listed in .chezmoidata/packages.yaml for pacman and Homebrew. The shells also expect atuin’s standalone installer layout in ~/.atuin/bin:

• fish: conf.d/atuin.env.fish sources ~/.atuin/bin/env.fish.
• bash and zsh: . "$HOME/.atuin/bin/env" just before atuin init.

Neither line checks that the file exists, so a machine without ~/.atuin/bin prints a sourcing error at shell start.

atuin-receipt.json

The receipt that atuin’s cargo-dist installer writes. It records how atuin was installed, which the self-updater (atuin update) needs:

Shell integration

In fish, 40-tools.fish sources hishtory before atuin, but atuin’s init runs later in config.fish and takes ctrl-r. zsh also loads suv init zsh (suvadu) if installed.

Key bindings

Under tmux, atuin’s [tmux] settings open the search in a tmux popup (80% wide, 60% tall) instead of inline.

AI inline

Commit a82921c (“add Atuin AI inline integration and keybinding”) added the ctrl-w bind to fish_user_key_bindings.fish and the following to config.fish:

1. atuin ai init fish | source, in the interactive block next to atuin init fish.
2. A copy of the _atuin_ai_question_mark function that atuin ai init fish prints, and bind "?" _atuin_ai_question_mark.

The config also sets [ai] enabled = true.

_atuin_ai_question_mark works like this:

• Buffer empty (or just ?): clears the line, prints OSC 133;C to /dev/tty to close the terminal’s semantic prompt zone (so shell-integrated terminals do not erase the TUI during a prompt reflow), then runs atuin ai inline --hook with stdout and stderr swapped. The TUI draws on the terminal, and the result comes back tagged:

  Output prefix	Effect
  __atuin_ai_print__:	Print the text, repaint
  __atuin_ai_cancel__	Repaint only
  __atuin_ai_execute__:	Put the command on the line and execute it
  __atuin_ai_insert__:	Put the command on the line for editing
  anything else, non-empty	Put it on the line for editing

• Buffer not empty: inserts a literal ? under emacs bindings. Under vi or hybrid bindings, which this config uses, it does nothing.

bind "?" in config.fish has no -M flag, so it applies to fish’s default mode, which is vi normal mode here. In insert mode ? types a question mark. To ask for a command, press Esc and then ? on an empty line, or press ctrl-w from either mode. The ctrl-w bind calls atuin ai inline without --hook and replaces fish’s default ctrl-w word deletion.

bash and zsh do not load atuin ai init.

Configuration

config.toml is atuin’s generated sample with a few keys set. The rest are commented-out defaults. The settings that take effect:

No sync server, key, or session is configured in the repo. atuin keeps its encryption key and session under ~/.local/share/atuin, outside chezmoi, and uses the default sync server.

Theme

themes/cyberdream.toml defines a theme named cyberdream, using the palette shared with fish and Starship: