terminalsense

A lightweight terminal daemon that provides autocorrect, inline ghost-text suggestions, and memory-based next-command prediction — all without a GUI or Electron runtime.

Features

• Autocorrect — detects and fixes mistyped commands before they execute (e.g. git comit → git commit)
• Ghost-text suggestions — inline completions as you type, accepted with Tab
• Memory predictions — learns your command sequences and predicts the next command

Requirements

• Node.js 18 or later
• bash, zsh, or PowerShell 5.1+ / pwsh

Installation

npm i terminalsense

Quick Start

1. Install

npm i terminalsense

2. Set up your shell

tac setup

This installs the shell hook into your profile, writes the hook file under ~/.terminal-autocorrect/, and starts the daemon.

If auto-detection picks the wrong shell, pass it explicitly:

tac setup bash
tac setup zsh
tac setup powershell

3. Test it

Try typing a command with a typo:

git statsu    # Press Enter → autocorrects to "git status"
npm isntall   # Press Enter → autocorrects to "npm install"
docker ps -a  # Works with any command

4. Monitor with Terminal UI

tac tui        # or tac -t

This opens a real-time dashboard showing:

• Daemon status and PID
• Recent autocorrections with timestamps
• Top corrected commands
• Current configuration
• Live statistics

Press r to refresh, q to quit.

Windows Notes

The tool is fully supported on Windows with the following platform-specific behaviour:

• IPC: Uses Windows named pipes (\\.\pipe\terminal-autocorrect) instead of Unix domain sockets.
• Shell hook: Use tac init powershell for Windows Terminal / PowerShell. The hook integrates with PSReadLine for Tab completion and PreCommandLookupAction for autocorrect.
• Stop command: Uses taskkill /F to terminate the daemon instead of SIGTERM.
• PATH scanning: Detects executables by extension (.exe, .cmd, .bat, .ps1, .com) and strips the extension so git.exe is registered as git.
• bash/zsh hooks: Still work inside Git Bash or WSL on Windows.

Commands

| Command | Description | |---|---| | tac start | Launch the daemon as a background process | | tac stop | Stop the running daemon | | tac status | Check whether the daemon is running | | tac tui or tac -t | Open terminal user interface dashboard | | tac setup [shell] | Install the shell hook, update the profile, and start the daemon | | tac init <shell> | Output the shell hook snippet for bash, zsh, or powershell | | tac corrections | List all autocorrections applied in the current session | | tac config set <key> <value> | Set a configuration value | | tac config get <key> | Get a configuration value | | tac config list | List all configuration keys and their current values | | tac history clear | Delete all stored command history and patterns |

The terminalsense binary is an alias for tac and accepts the same commands.

Configuration Reference

Configuration is stored at ~/.terminal-autocorrect/config.json. Use tac config set to update values.

| Key | Type | Default | Description | |---|---|---|---| | maxEditDistance | integer | 2 | Maximum edit distance for autocorrect to fire. Higher values correct more aggressively. | | maxHistoryEntries | integer | 10000 | Maximum number of history entries to retain. Oldest entries are removed when the cap is exceeded. | | historyPath | string | ~/.terminal-autocorrect/history.json | Path to the command history file. | | suggestionColor | string | dim | ANSI color name used to render ghost-text suggestions. | | enabled | boolean | true | Master switch. When false, all autocorrect and suggestion features are disabled. | | autocorrectEnabled | boolean | true | Enable or disable the autocorrect engine independently. | | suggestionsEnabled | boolean | true | Enable or disable inline ghost-text suggestions independently. | | memoryEnabled | boolean | true | Enable or disable memory-based next-command prediction independently. |

Examples

# Increase autocorrect aggressiveness
tac config set maxEditDistance 3

# Disable autocorrect but keep suggestions
tac config set autocorrectEnabled false

# Change the history file location
tac config set historyPath /tmp/tac-history.json

# View all current settings
tac config list

Data Files

All data is stored in ~/.terminal-autocorrect/:

| File | Description | |---|---| | config.json | User configuration | | history.json | Command history and learned patterns | | daemon.pid | Daemon process ID (lock file) | | daemon.sock | Unix domain socket for IPC |

Uninstalling

tac stop
npm uninstall -g terminalsense
rm -rf ~/.terminal-autocorrect

License

MIT