Glance

Bootstrap

Check if glance is available:

which glance

If missing, use uvx --from glancecli glance as the prefix for all glance commands (e.g. cmd 2>&1 | uvx --from glancecli glance).

First time: run glance help to learn the full interface.

When to use

Pipe through glance when output is unknown or likely >40 lines:

• Build output (go build, npm run build, cargo build, make)
• Test output (go test, pytest, jest, cargo test)
• Logs (kubectl logs, docker logs, journalctl)
• Container/cluster commands (kubectl get, docker ps)
• Large searches (grep -r, find, rg) — pipe through glance first, then drill into the captured results instead of re-running with different flags

When to skip

Commands with reliably short output — git status, pwd, which, echo, ls (small dirs), git log -5.

Workflow

Skim

cmd 2>&1 | glance
# or with a preset for builds/tests:
cmd 2>&1 | glance -p errors

Read the footer — it gives you the capture ID and line count.

Drill

Don't jump to full output. Use targeted queries first:

glance show <id> -a LINE 5    # context around a specific line
glance show <id> -l 50-80     # line range
glance show <id> -f 'regex'   # filter stored output

Save-and-query

Pipe once, then query the stored capture multiple times with different filters/ranges — including with different tools. Avoids re-running expensive commands. Especially useful for broad exploratory searches — run one wide rg or find, capture it, then use glance show <id> -f to explore different aspects of the results.

If you lose track of the capture ID, use glance list to find it.

Key gotcha

Always use 2>&1 — without it, stderr (where most errors go) isn't captured by the pipe.