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

14 points by pranav_tech26 5 hours ago | 14 comments

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

rft 48 minutes ago |

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.

nozzlegear 1 hour ago |

Gotta be jujutsu. I've completely stopped using git and use jj everywhere instead. It works so much better for my workflow.

ddxv 1 hour ago |

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

fragmede 58 minutes ago | |

setup LocalCommand, in ~/.ssh/config, so your config files get copied to every server you connect to, so you have all your aliases and scripts.

rft 34 minutes ago | | |

I intentionally avoid this, especially if I am not the only one connecting to a server. I see potentially breaking others' expectations for my convenience as a clear downside. Plus there is a level of paranoia there, I might have unintentionally included a credential in some config that gets copied over. That potentially increases the blast radius of a server compromise beyond what is strictly required for that specific server. I might copy over some scripts into a directory not in $PATH, easy enough to add it to my shell session if needed, CTRL+R helps as well.

justsomehnguy 1 hour ago |

    user: pranav_tech26
    created: 16 hours ago
    karma: 7

fragmede 1 hour ago | |

...yes?

justsomehnguy 57 minutes ago | | |

No.

EDIT: also check their comment history.

rhysha 4 hours ago |

bearer-cli for static application security testing

illegalbyte2 1 hour ago | |

This looks great, thanks for sharing.

slang800 2 hours ago |

mansi1010 1 hour ago |

screen

soupspaces 2 hours ago |

tmux tealdeer zoxide