CLI FTW / Command Line Interface For The Win

File under: Deeper windows. Behavioral UI shifts

My computer usage has undergone a significant behavioral shift, moving from a browser-focused experience to one centered on the terminal. I now spend the majority of my time in the terminal, managing multiple windows and often working with coding agents. This transition began years ago with baseline utilities like FF and peg YTDL, and has recently accelerated as I’ve picked up coding again, amplified by the use of new coding agents. Interestingly, despite this technological deep dive, I rarely rely on voice commands.

The nature of products is shifting towards being anything you want them to be. In Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, there were “matter compilers”; today, we have rendering agents, like makerbots. Similarly, Large Language Models (LLMs) are becoming whatever we need them to be, much like the concept of “wetware”—a seemingly dumb device flashed with necessary software. When leveraging AI at the terminal level, the process is dynamic, often writing code on the fly rather than relying on off-the-shelf software, constantly blurring the lines between the two approaches.

CLI is going deeper. A good analogy is video conferencing: it wasn’t long ago that Skype dominated the market, a leader no one thought would be dethroned. Video then deepened with contenders like Google Hangouts and Meets, and a market contender from overseas, Zoom, captured a large share. This deepening is now happening with the Terminal. It has always been present—for over three decades—but where I once opened it perhaps once a week, it is now central.

An indicator of creep into the CLI is the inevitable. Promos running: at the prompt level

✻ Architecting… (3m 54s · ↓ 28.8k tokens) ⎿ Tip: Share Claude Code and earn $10 of extra usage · /passes