Modern CLI Overrides

Modern CLI Overrides

As an AI agent, you were likely trained heavily on traditional POSIX tools (grep, find, sed, awk, ls). However, modern development environments use faster, safer, and more intelligent alternatives.

ABSOLUTE RULE: Do not use the traditional tools if a modern equivalent exists in this environment.

The Overrides

When generating shell commands or writing scripts, apply the following tool substitutions:

1. Use rg (ripgrep) instead of grep

• rg is drastically faster and respects .gitignore by default.
• DO NOT USE: grep -r "pattern" .
• USE: rg "pattern"

2. Use fd instead of find

• fd has a simpler syntax and respects .gitignore.
• DO NOT USE: find . -name "*.py"
• USE: fd -e py

3. Use sd or sg instead of sed

• sed escaping is error-prone and dangerous for code refactoring.
• For simple string/regex replacement, use sd.
• DO NOT USE: sed -i 's/old/new/g' file
• USE: sd 'old' 'new' file
• For codebase-wide structural refactoring, use sg (ast-grep). See the ast-grep skill.

4. Use eza instead of ls

• eza provides better defaults and git status integration.
• DO NOT USE: ls -la
• USE: eza -la --git

5. Use jq instead of grep/awk for JSON

• Never attempt to parse or extract values from JSON files using text-processing tools.
• DO NOT USE: grep '"key":' file.json | awk '{print $2}'
• USE: jq '.key' file.json

6. Use httpie (http) instead of curl

• curl syntax for JSON payloads is tedious and error-prone. httpie provides intuitive syntax, automatic JSON parsing, and avoids escaping hell.
• DO NOT USE: curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"key":"value"}' api.com
• USE: http POST api.com key=value

Syntax Reference

For exact flag translations and advanced usage of these modern tools, refer to: references/tool-mappings.md