Words and pictures in the history of user experience and the future of artificial intelligence

https://duncanstephen.net/words-and-pictures-in-the-history-of-user-experience-and-the-future-of-artificial-intelligence/

PSA: How to create a random password in the command line (something that also just learned to do today, so also a TIL entry):

```bash
randpass () { echo $(openssl rand -base64 "${1:-12}") }
```

The way this works is that you can type either `randpass`, and you will get a random password of 12 character (among those that are safe in the base64 representation; namely, lowercase and capital letters, decimal digits, plus `+` and `/`, and `= ` for padding).

Or, you can type `randpass 8` or `randpass 256`, for instance, to get a random password of the given characters long, to accommodate the needs from the service you need the password for.

On the Mac, you can do `randpass | pbcopy` and get it directly on your clipboard, so that you can paste it elsewhere, while keeping it hidden.

#PSA #PublicServiceAnnouncement #TIL #TodayILearned #CLI #CommandLineInterface #openssl #pbcopy #bash #zsh

Just did another utility function that I've been looking towards for a lot of time: `openremote` is a bash/zsh function that uses git to determine if you're inside a git repository, and if you are, uses `awk` and `sed` to open the URL in your default browser (on macOS˜):

```bash
openremote () {
if [ "$(git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree 2>/dev/null)" = "true" ]; then
open $(git remote -v | grep origin | grep fetch | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/ssh/https/g')
else
echo "Not inside a git repository."
fi
}
```

The `sed` command replaces `ssh` for `https` to get a URL that will be properly redirected by the corresponding repository.

#CLI #CommandLineInterface #Git #macOS

AI Is Moving Past Chatbots. Claude Cowork Shows What’s Next – TIME

Updated: Jan 15, 2026 9:36 AM PT

AI Is Moving Beyond Chatbots. Claude Cowork Shows What Comes Next

• Tech
• AI

by Nikita Ostrovsky

The DNA file had been gathering dust in Pietro Schirano’s computer for years. Then, earlier this month, he gave it to Claude Code—an “agentic coding tool” developed by Anthropic—for analysis. “I’m attaching my raw DNA file from Ancestry DNA,” he told the tool.

The AI spawned copies of itself on Schirano’s computer, each one simulating an expert in a different part of the genome—one expert on cardiovascular disease, another on aging, a third on autoimmune disease. “There were a lot of things that resonated with my life,” says Schirano, who was an engineer at Anthropic prior to founding MagicPath, an AI product design startup. “I always thought that I could deal with caffeine better than all of my friends. It was always this inside joke: I can just drink seven espressos because I’m Italian.” Claude Code’s analysis revealed that Schirano does, in fact, have a gene that allows him to metabolize caffeine better than the average person, that he’s predisposed to Alzheimer’s, and suggested supplements to take based on his genetic profile.

Claude Code, released in February 2025, was Anthropic’s first successful attempt at building an AI agent—a system that takes actions on the user’s behalf, rather than merely conversing in a chat interface. Claude Code can access files and programs on a user’s computer, and even run “sub-agents” for specific tasks, such as those that analyzed different parts of Schirano’s genome. It has steadily accrued a devoted following of tinkerers using it to file their taxes, design knitting patterns, and even autonomously grow a tomato plant.

Yet most people have never heard of Claude Code. That’s because the primary way of accessing the tool is through a command line interface—the old-school computer terminal that went out of fashion among the general public some time in the last millennium. That obscurity might be about to change. On Monday, Anthropic announced Claude Cowork, which the company calls “Claude Code for the rest of your work.” 

“It’s gonna blow a lot of people’s minds who are not coders,” says Martin DeVido, the developer behind the experiment using Claude Code to grow a tomato plant.

Claude Cowork aims to bring Claude Code’s agentic capabilities to a broader audience by supplying it with a friendlier user interface and hiding some of the complexity that has made Claude Code daunting to the uninitiated. The tool, initially available as a research preview for customers paying $100 a month for the Max plan, has “rough edges,” according to Felix Reiseberg, its lead engineer. One user found that the app gave her “scary error messages” and wouldn’t connect to her calendar. 

Continue/Read Original Article Here: AI Is Moving Past Chatbots. Claude Cowork Shows What’s Next | TIME

How does passing an option value with spaces work in various option parsing software (in context of shell & #commandLineInterface)?

Expectation is that the option will have the entire string passed intact. This came up due to https://github.com/sahib/rmlint/issues/747 .

#Python "argparse" & #Perl "Getopt::Long" are what I personally care for; may check self; did not have to think about this before.

#optionParsing #softwareDev

Today I learned that you can use split fields based on a character (`t`, `--field-separator=`) and use several of those fields (`-k`, `--key=`) for sorting.

So, for sorting numerically a list of `Sys-Req-nnnn` requirements that is in the clipboard, I can use the following command to make sure I get them sorted, and uniquely listed:

```bash
pbpaste | sort -t \- -k 3 -n | uniq
```

#TIL #TodayILearned #CLI #CommandLineInterface #sort #uniq

Spécialité "Geek de haut niveau" avec VIM "Navigation Vim :
la vie après HJKL"

#vim #ÉditeurDeTexte #CommandLineInterface #CLI #LigneDeCommande ...

https://fabi1cazenave.github.io/slides/2025-cdl-vim-nav/#1

Ra mắt AI-CLI-Selector: Công cụ khởi chạy thông minh cho các công cụ dòng lệnh AI!
Tính năng: Khởi chạy thông minh, Cài đặt tích hợp, Giao diện hiện đại
Hữu ích cho những ai có nhiều công cụ AI, muốn thử công cụ mới mà không cần nhớ cú pháp
#AI #CLI #CôngCụ #KhởiChạy #TrợLyIntel #ArtificialIntelligence #CommandLineInterface #Tool #Launcher #TrợLyTríTuệ #CôngCụTrợLy

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1oxhunk/i_built_aicliselector_a_smart_launcher_for_all/

Just published version 0.5.0 clingwrap, my Rust library for making easier things I commonly need in my command line programs. This version adds a little helper to running a command on a remote host over SSH.q

#Rust #RustLang #clingwrap #cli #CommandLineInterface #SSH