whatwasit

Local-first semantic search for your shell history.

Search by what you were trying to do, not the exact command you typed — and nothing ever leaves your machine.

whatwasit "how did I fix that nginx issue"

Returns the session of commands you actually ran (cd, vim, systemctl reload nginx) weeks ago, even though you never typed "fix" or "issue".

Features

• Intent-based recall — searches whole command sessions, not isolated lines
• Hybrid search — semantic embeddings plus FTS5 keyword matching for tool names, flags, and short literal queries
• Incremental indexing — whatwasit index skips rebuild when history files are unchanged (mtime/size fingerprint)
• Interactive TUI — live debounced search, collapsible sessions, themes
• Scripting — --json, --plain, and pipe-friendly headless output
• Fully offline — ONNX embedding model on CPU; no cloud, no API keys
• Non-destructive — reads your existing history files; never modifies them

Install

pip install whatwasit

Upgrade an existing install:

pip install -U whatwasit

Requirements: Python 3.9+, ~100 MB for the embedding model (downloaded once on first run), and for clipboard copy on Linux: wl-copy (Wayland) or xclip (X11).

Quick start

# Build the search index from your shell history
whatwasit index

# Interactive REPL (default when run with no arguments)
whatwasit

# One-shot search
whatwasit "that time I set up passwordless ssh"

# JSON for scripts and agents
whatwasit "docker compose down" --json

Usage

# Refresh the index (skips if history sources unchanged)
whatwasit index

# Force a full rebuild
whatwasit index --rebuild

# Adjust session grouping window (default: 300 seconds)
whatwasit index --window 600

# Plain output (Rich panels on a TTY, line-oriented when piped)
whatwasit "docker volume that wouldn't persist" --plain

# Machine-readable JSON
whatwasit "nginx config" --json

# Return more results
whatwasit "nginx config" -k 20

# Optional warm daemon for faster repeated queries
whatwasit daemon start
whatwasit daemon status
whatwasit daemon stop

TUI / REPL

Running whatwasit with no arguments opens a persistent REPL: search bar on top, results below, key hints in the footer. Results update live as you type (short debounce). Each row shows the primary command in bold, path underneath, and a relative timestamp (2h ago) right-aligned. Low-confidence matches show a ⚠ after the command.

Sessions with multiple commands collapse to the matched command plus context; press Space to expand. When the top result is below the confidence threshold (default 0.40), a soft warning banner appears without hiding results.

One-shot whatwasit "query" opens the same result browser with pre-fetched results. Use --plain, --headless, or --json for non-interactive output.

Configuration

Optional config file: ~/.config/whatwasit/config.toml

output_mode = "tui"              # "tui" or "plain"
tui_page_size = 5
tui_theme = "midnight"           # midnight | default | high-contrast
low_confidence_threshold = 0.40
use_daemon = true                # use warm daemon when running (if started)

Theme changes from the REPL (t or /theme) are saved here automatically. CLI flags override config values where applicable (for example, --plain forces plain output).

Data directory: ~/.local/share/whatwasit/ (whatwasit.db + index.usearch)

If you indexed under the older hist app name, that data path is still detected automatically — no re-index required.

History sources: ~/.zsh_history, ~/.bash_history, and Atuin (if installed). All sources are read non-destructively.

How it works

1. Parse — reads shell history into timestamped commands
2. Group — clusters commands into sessions by time gap and working directory
3. Embed — encodes each session locally with all-MiniLM-L6-v2 (~22 MB ONNX, CPU-only)
4. Index — stores vectors in a local index, session metadata in SQLite, and command text in FTS5 for keyword search
5. Search — embeds your query, finds nearest sessions, merges keyword hits via reciprocal-rank fusion, and highlights matching commands within each session

Privacy

• All search and indexing run on your machine
• No network calls after the one-time model download
• Your shell history is never uploaded anywhere
• Daemon Unix socket is restricted to your user (0o600)

Feedback

Bug reports and feature requests: github.com/ThorOdinson246/whatwasit/issues

License

MIT — see LICENSE.