inshellisense — IDE-Style Autocomplete for Any Terminal

Introduction

inshellisense brings the autocomplete experience of VS Code to any terminal shell. Developed by Microsoft, it provides predictive suggestions for commands, flags, and file paths as you type, working across bash, zsh, fish, PowerShell, and other shells.

What inshellisense Does

• Provides real-time command and flag autocompletion as you type
• Suggests file and directory paths with fuzzy matching
• Supports 600+ CLI tools with spec-based completion definitions
• Works across bash, zsh, fish, PowerShell, nushell, xonsh, and cmd
• Renders a dropdown suggestion menu directly in the terminal

Architecture Overview

inshellisense wraps the terminal session in a pseudo-TTY layer that intercepts keystrokes and injects completion suggestions. It uses the Fig completion spec format (now open-sourced) to define completions for hundreds of CLI tools. The suggestion engine runs as a background Node.js process that communicates with the shell wrapper.

Self-Hosting & Configuration

• Install globally via npm: npm install -g @microsoft/inshellisense
• Bind to your shell with inshellisense bind for persistent activation
• Unbind with inshellisense unbind to revert to default shell behavior
• Custom completion specs can be added to ~/.inshellisense/
• Configure keybindings and appearance through the config file

Key Features

• Supports 600+ CLI tools out of the box with Fig-compatible specs
• Shell-agnostic: works with any POSIX shell and PowerShell
• Ghost-text inline suggestions similar to GitHub Copilot in the terminal
• Minimal latency with suggestions appearing in under 50ms
• No cloud connectivity required; all completions run locally

Comparison with Similar Tools

• Fig (now defunct) — Provided similar IDE-like completions; inshellisense uses the same spec format
• zsh-autosuggestions — History-based suggestions for zsh only; inshellisense covers all shells
• fish shell — Built-in autosuggestions; inshellisense brings similar features to any shell
• carapace — Multi-shell completion engine; inshellisense focuses on visual inline suggestions

FAQ

Q: Does it work with my existing shell configuration? A: Yes. It layers on top of your shell without modifying your dotfiles.

Q: How does it differ from built-in tab completion? A: It shows a dropdown with descriptions and supports fuzzy matching as you type, similar to VS Code.

Q: Is telemetry collected? A: No telemetry is collected by default.

Q: Can I add completions for custom scripts? A: Yes. You can write Fig-compatible completion specs in TypeScript or JSON.

Sources

• https://github.com/microsoft/inshellisense
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/@microsoft/inshellisense