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Ask HN: What is your favorite lightweight tool or CLI utility in 2026?

20 points by pranav_tech26 ↗ HN
Tools like ripgrep, fzf, and htop have saved me countless hours over the years. What small utilities do you rely on daily?

27 comments

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rhysha
bearer-cli for static application security testing
ddxv
ssh and scp just never fails to impress

-J for jumping -L for port forwarding -X for pulling remote applications to view on my laptop (waypipe for Wayland)

Adding all those, and ips and whatnot to .ssh/config so I just type:

ssh foo

aborsy
SFTP is just simpler and better, if available.
nozzlegear
Gotta be jujutsu. I've completely stopped using git and use jj everywhere instead. It works so much better for my workflow.
justsomehnguy 

    user: pranav_tech26
    created: 16 hours ago
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rft
ssh, scp, tmux, (grml-)zsh, grep, less, file, tar, git

The time saving of a well filled ~/.ssh/config is impressive, especially once you start juggling ProxyJump hops.

charlie90
Everything/es.exe for searching every file on disk, its nice for AI agents to use
BorisMelnik
grep + es.exe on windows is the only way to look for files
argus95
leaf (Terminal Markdown previewer)
wbnns
GitHub CLI -- I'm using it every day and just about anything I'd want to do on GitHub, I can do straight from the command line

https://cli.github.com/

taf2
vim, ls , cd, grep, cat being close seconds
aborsy
Find, fzf, vim, ssh, …
amterp
Big fan of gron[0] and zoxide[1]. Gron for flattening and viewing JSON, and zoxide (z) for fuzzily jumping around on my system or on remote systems with z installed.

Also been using Rad [2] (disclaimer: am author) to replace my suite of Bash scripts and write new ones, quite happy with one atm which sets reminders e.g. 'remind 2h check the CI build' which will give me an OS reminder in two hours, I use it a ton at work.

[0] https://github.com/tomnomnom/gron [1] https://github.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide [2] https://github.com/amterp/rad

grandimam
Suki - https://github.com/grandimam/suki

It's something that i built for myself. I am interested in the topic of building expertise, and spend a lot of time reading books. After a certain I realised that I needed resources that was very specific to my use case and current skill level rather than something that was static.

Suki allows me to build that curriculum, and probes progressively to help me build a real mental model.

hiAndrewQuinn
Do I have to give just one? I have a whole script to install them! https://github.com/hiAndrewQuinn/shell-bling-ubuntu

Looking over this list I would recommend you check out `fd`, a much faster `find` with an interface that actually fits how people tend to use the tool.

`lnav` is also an excellent local log viewer if you allow TUIs.

ryanchants
uv. Being able to download an instagram video with "uvx yt-dlp LINK", or create one off-scripts with requirements in the file header, and not having to worry about managing virtual envs and still having access to the python ecosystem is so nice.
mikewarot
Having programmed back in the days when source control involved 1.44mb floppy disks with paper labels stating the version of the pkZipped source code and the date....

git is still freaking magic. We used to comment out the old version of code but leave it in the source as our sole undo strategy. git brings sanity to the world.

We live in the future, it's glorious. 8)