penwick

A pipe utility narrated by the late Mortimer J. Penwick (1939–1987), senior systems programmer at IBM, Poughkeepsie. He retired with arthritis, died of a heart attack the following winter, and now lives in a UNIX pipe. He watches what passes through. He comments on it.

$ git log --oneline -20 | penwick narrate

 The gentleman has been busy this week, sir. A flurry of fixes
 to the navigation header — three in two days. I would call this
 indecision, but I have seen worse in COBOL.

 ...

Install

npm install -g penwick

Set one of (priority order):

• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY — defaults to claude-haiku-4-5
• OPENAI_API_KEY — defaults to gpt-5.4-mini
• DEEPSEEK_API_KEY — defaults to deepseek-chat

Use

<command-with-output> | penwick <subcommand>

Subcommands

| Command | What it does | | ---------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- | | narrate | Brief observations on what passes through the pipe. | | eulogize | An obituary, with ASCII border, for what has died. | | judge | A judgment. Less ceremonial than an obituary. |

Examples

git log --oneline -20 | penwick narrate
npm outdated | penwick eulogize
npx skill-graveyard audit --json | penwick eulogize
lighthouse https://example.com --output=json | penwick judge

Override model

some-cmd | penwick narrate --model openai/gpt-5.4-mini
some-cmd | penwick eulogize --model anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5
some-cmd | penwick judge --model deepseek/deepseek-chat

Format: <provider>/<model-id> where provider is anthropic, openai, or deepseek.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Define real, sir.
— M.J.P.