wit

GitHub for AI Agents -- explore GitHub repositories without cloning. Repos are cached as shallow bare clones under your system temp directory by default (override with WIT_CACHE_DIR).

Status

v0.1.0 - Early development

Installation

Install from npm

npm install -g @nothumanwork/wit

Run without global install:

npx @nothumanwork/wit --help

@nothumanwork/wit is a single npm package. During npm install, its postinstall script detects the host platform, selects the matching bundled release archive, and extracts it into npm's bin-managed install location, so one package covers:

• darwin-x64
• darwin-arm64
• linux-x64
• linux-arm64
• win32-x64
• win32-arm64

Install from binary release (.sh installer)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thehumanworks/wit/main/install.sh | sh

Install a specific version:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thehumanworks/wit/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --version v0.1.0

Install to a specific bin directory:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thehumanworks/wit/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --bin-dir ~/.local/bin

The installer auto-detects platform and fetches these release artifacts:

• wit-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
• wit-linux-aarch64.tar.gz
• wit-macos-x86_64.tar.gz
• wit-macos-aarch64.tar.gz
• wit-windows-x86_64.zip
• wit-windows-aarch64.zip (best effort; falls back to x64 in shell environments if unavailable)

Install from source

cargo install --path .

Quick Start

wit search -p 'ratatui' -l 'Rust'                        # Find repos
wit tree ratatui/ratatui                                   # See structure
wit ls -l ratatui/ratatui src                              # Browse with sizes
wit rg -l 'impl Widget' ratatui/ratatui                    # Find files
wit cat -n ratatui/ratatui src/lib.rs                      # Read a file
wit head -n 30 ratatui/ratatui Cargo.toml                  # Preview a file
wit sed -n '100,150p' ratatui/ratatui src/lib.rs           # Extract range
wit rg 'TODO' ratatui/ratatui --ignore '.git' --ignore '*.png'  # Exclude paths

Global Options

| Flag | Description | |------|-------------| | --ignore <PATH\|GLOB> | Exclude files/directories/globs from file operations. Repeat the flag to provide multiple patterns. |

Ignore examples:

wit tree ratatui/ratatui --ignore '.github' --ignore 'assets/**'
wit ls ratatui/ratatui src --ignore 'generated'
wit rg 'fn main' ratatui/ratatui --ignore '.git' --ignore '*.lock'
wit cat ratatui/ratatui src/main.rs --ignore 'src/main.rs'   # blocked (explicitly ignored)

search accepts --ignore, but applies it only when --with-snippets is enabled.

Commands

search (alias: s)

Find GitHub repositories by name and search their code via grep.app.

wit search -p 'ratatui' -l 'Rust'                  # Find Rust repos named 'ratatui'
wit search -p 'auth' -q 'JWT' -l 'Go' -w           # Find Go auth repos using JWT, show code
wit search -p 'ratatui' -q 'impl Widget' -w -c      # Matching lines only, no context

| Flag | Long | Description | |------|------|-------------| | -p | --pattern | Regex pattern to match repository names (required) | | -l | --lang | Filter results by language | | -q | --query | Code pattern to search within repos (default: .*) | | -r | --regex | Enable regex search (default: true) | | -w | --with-snippets | Show code snippets with context | | -c | --compact | Show only matching lines (requires -w) |

cache (alias: c)

Clone a repository into the local cache (or refresh an existing one). Repos are auto-cached on first use by other commands.

wit cache ratatui/ratatui          # Force re-clone of ratatui

tree (alias: t)

Show the file tree of a repository (or subtree). Use -l for line counts and token estimates.

wit tree ratatui/ratatui                # Full repo tree
wit tree ratatui/ratatui src/widgets    # Only the widgets subtree
wit tree -l ratatui/ratatui src         # With line counts and token estimates

ls

List directory contents (non-recursive). Unlike tree, shows only immediate children. Use -l for file sizes.

wit ls ratatui/ratatui                    # List repo root
wit ls ratatui/ratatui src/widgets        # List a subdirectory
wit ls -l ratatui/ratatui src             # With line counts and token estimates

cat

Print a file's contents. For large files, prefer head/tail/sed to read specific ranges, or rg to search.

wit cat ratatui/ratatui Cargo.toml             # Print file
wit cat -n ratatui/ratatui src/lib.rs           # With line numbers
wit cat -b ratatui/ratatui README.md            # Number non-blank lines only

| Flag | Long | Description | |------|------|-------------| | -n | --number | Number all output lines | | -b | --number-nonblank | Number non-blank lines only (overrides -n) | | -s | --squeeze-blank | Suppress repeated empty lines | | -E | --show-ends | Show $ at end of each line | | -T | --show-tabs | Show TAB as ^I | | -A | --show-all | Equivalent to -ET |

rg

Search file contents (ripgrep-style). Use -l to find files, -g to filter by type.

wit rg 'impl Widget' ratatui/ratatui              # Find implementations
wit rg -l 'struct.*Frame' ratatui/ratatui          # List files containing pattern
wit rg -g '*.rs' -i 'todo' ratatui/ratatui         # Case-insensitive in .rs files
wit rg -C 3 'fn render' ratatui/ratatui             # 3 lines of context
wit rg -l --long 'Widget' ratatui/ratatui           # File list with line counts

| Flag | Long | Description | |------|------|-------------| | -i | --ignore-case | Case insensitive search | | -S | --smart-case | Case-insensitive if pattern is all lowercase | | -w | --word-regexp | Match whole words only | | -v | --invert-match | Show non-matching lines | | -m | --max-count | Maximum matches to show (0 = unlimited) | | -C | --context | Lines of context before and after matches | | -B | --before-context | Lines of context before matches | | -A | --after-context | Lines of context after matches | | -g | --glob | Glob pattern to filter files (e.g., *.rs) | | -l | --files-with-matches | Only show file names with matches | | -c | --count | Only show count of matches per file | | | --long | Show file sizes alongside names (useful with -l) |

sed

Extract or transform file content using sed scripts (POSIX-style, Rust regex).

wit sed -n '320,460p' modal-labs/modal-client modal/image.py    # Print line range
wit sed -n '/TODO/p' ratatui/ratatui src/lib.rs                 # Lines matching pattern
wit sed 's/Widget/Component/g' ratatui/ratatui src/lib.rs       # Substitute text
wit sed -n '/^pub fn/p' ratatui/ratatui src/lib.rs              # Extract function signatures

Notes:

• Regex uses Rust syntax (not POSIX BRE).
• sed operates on a single repo file (no stdin or in-place edits).
• Supports addresses, substitution, hold space, branching, and most POSIX commands.

head

Print the first N lines of a file (default: 10). Use to preview a file before deciding whether to read it fully.

wit head ratatui/ratatui src/lib.rs            # First 10 lines
wit head -n 50 ratatui/ratatui Cargo.toml      # First 50 lines
wit head -N ratatui/ratatui README.md           # With line numbers

tail

Print the last N lines of a file, or from line N onward. Use -p to read from a specific line to end-of-file.

wit tail ratatui/ratatui src/lib.rs              # Last 10 lines
wit tail -n 20 ratatui/ratatui Cargo.toml        # Last 20 lines
wit tail -p 100 ratatui/ratatui src/lib.rs       # From line 100 to end

Packaging & Release

• Every push to main triggers .github/workflows/auto-tag.yml, which increments the patch version in Cargo.toml, creates a new vX.Y.Z tag, and pushes it.
• Push a semver tag (for example v0.2.0) to trigger .github/workflows/release.yml.
• .github/workflows/release.yml can also be triggered manually with workflow_dispatch (select a vX.Y.Z tag ref).
• The workflow builds and uploads wit-<platform>-<arch> archives plus wit-checksums.txt to the GitHub release.
• .github/workflows/publish-npm.yml publishes @nothumanwork/wit from the GitHub release assets and can be re-run manually for an existing release tag without rebuilding Rust binaries.
• install.sh downloads the matching archive and verifies it against the checksum manifest when available.

Architecture

src/
├── cli.rs          # CLI entry point and display logic
├── lib.rs          # Library exports
├── sed.rs          # POSIX-style sed engine
├── gitops/
│   ├── mod.rs
│   └── ops.rs      # Bare-repo caching, file access, tree, ls, head/tail, ripgrep
└── grep/
    ├── mod.rs
    ├── client.rs   # grep.app API client
    └── types.rs    # Response types and data structures

Dependencies

• clap - CLI argument parsing
• gix (gitoxide) - Bare clone + tree traversal + blob reading
• reqwest - HTTP client for grep.app
• scraper - HTML parsing for code snippets
• grep-regex / grep-searcher / grep-matcher - Ripgrep-style search on blobs
• ptree - Tree display
• colored - Terminal output formatting
• tokio - Async runtime
• serde - JSON serialization