super-man

An interactive, fuzzy command + man-page flag browser for the terminal. Search 260+ commands, drill into any one to fuzzy-search its flags with live descriptions, and jump back to the command list instantly.

Demo

Video (MP4): demo/super-man-demo.mp4 · asciinema cast: demo/super-man-demo.cast

The clip shows opening an entry (grep), browsing its flags, then pressing Esc to return straight to the home screen — no intermediary step — and repeating with tar.

Usage

super-man                       # interactive home screen (fzf)
super-man <command> [filter]    # jump straight to a command's flags
super-man -l, --list            # list all known commands
super-man -h, --help            # full help

# Natural-language modes (database-backed, needs jq)
super-man ask "find large files"        # ask a question
super-man task "monitor cpu usage"      # describe what you want to do
super-man category files                # browse by category (files/text/network/system)
super-man explain "tar -czf"            # explain what a command does
super-man ai "count lines in js files"  # AI bash one-liner via local LLM (advanced)

AI mode (local LLM via ollama)

ai generates a bash one-liner from plain English using a local ollama model. The default is westenfelder/NL2SH, a model purpose-built for natural-language-to-shell — in our 25-query benchmark it was the most accurate, the only one that handled hard multi-stage tasks. The model is configurable, so you can still A/B other local LLMs:

super-man ai "find python files modified last week"          # default model (NL2SH)
super-man ai -q "list the 5 largest files"                   # quiet: print ONLY the command
super-man ai --model qwen2.5-coder:1.5b "count lines in js"  # override model
super-man ai --compare "list the 5 largest files"            # run several models side by side

The -q / --quiet / --raw flag prints only the generated command to stdout (errors go to stderr), so it composes in scripts and pipelines:

cmd=$(super-man ai -q "compress the logs folder into a tarball")
echo "$cmd"            # tar -czf logs.tar.gz logs/

Env var	Purpose	Default
SUPERMAN_AI_MODEL	Default model for ai	westenfelder/NL2SH
SUPERMAN_AI_COMPARE_MODELS	Space-separated list for --compare	westenfelder/NL2SH qwen2.5-coder:1.5b

The purpose-built westenfelder/NL2SH model receives the raw query; general coder models (e.g. qwen2.5-coder) are prompt-wrapped to emit a single bare command. Pull either with ollama pull <model>. See the benchmark write-up for the full model comparison.

Esc in the flag browser returns to the command list; Esc on the home screen exits.

Requirements: jq for the natural-language modes, fzf for interactive mode.

See docs/ for design notes and the full feature history.