CLI arsenal: the tools I actually use

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

CLI arsenal

This page grows over time. It’s not a “top 10” list — it’s the actual list of what’s in my shell history, my aliases, and my containers.

File & search

eza — ls replacement with git status, icons
fd — fast find with sane defaults
ripgrep (rg) — fast grep, ignores .gitignore
bat — cat with syntax highlighting and paging
fzf — fuzzy finder for everything

Process & resource

htop — interactive process viewer
btop — the prettier one
glances — web-based, for monitoring without Grafana
lsof — what’s using that port? lsof -i :8080

Networking

dog — dig for humans
cURL — yes, still
httpie — curl for humans, JSON-aware
mtr — traceroute + ping in one
nmap — for the occasional port scan

Server ops

docker + docker compose — containers, obviously
caddy — reverse proxy + auto HTTPS
restic — encrypted, deduplicated backups
fail2ban — (or CrowdSec)
ufw — firewall

Monitoring

netdata — gorgeous per-host dashboard, single Docker container
prometheus + grafana — for serious setups
uptime-kuma — self-hosted status pages
vnstat — bandwidth tracker (long-term trends)

Inside the shell

fish — my shell. Autosuggestions out of the box.
starship — fast, minimal prompt
tmux — terminal multiplexer (with tmux-pop for fuzzy session switching)
zoxide — smart cd that learns your habits

Reading config

delta — git diff that doesn’t hurt your eyes
lazygit — TUI for git when I need it

Aliases I can’t live without

# ~/.config/fish/config.fish (excerpt)
alias ll "eza -l --git --icons"
alias la "eza -la --git --icons"
alias cat "bat --plain"
alias grep "rg"
alias k "kubectl"
alias dc "docker compose"
alias dps "docker ps --format 'table {{.Names}}\t{{.Status}}\t{{.Ports}}'"
alias dlog "docker logs -f --tail 100"
alias top "btop"
alias ping "ping -c 5"
alias ip "ip -c"

What did I miss? Let me know — I’m always looking for the next tool.

Tools on nuteo.info