Starship — Minimal Blazing-Fast Customizable Shell Prompt

What it is

Starship is a minimal, fast, and customizable prompt for any shell. Written in Rust, it renders contextual information like git status, language versions, Kubernetes context, and cloud profiles without measurable latency. Configuration lives in a single TOML file.

Starship works with bash, zsh, fish, PowerShell, nushell, cmd, xonsh, ion, elvish, and more. It targets developers who spend significant time in the terminal and want context-rich prompts without slowdowns.

How it saves time or tokens

Starship eliminates manual checks for project context. Instead of running git status, node --version, or kubectl config current-context separately, the prompt shows all of this inline. It detects package managers, Docker contexts, and cloud profiles automatically. The Rust implementation keeps rendering under 1ms even with many modules enabled.

How to use

1. Install Starship via Homebrew, curl, or scoop.
2. Add the init script to your shell configuration file.
3. Customize ~/.config/starship.toml to enable or disable modules.

# Install
brew install starship

# Add to ~/.zshrc
eval "$(starship init zsh)"

# Add to ~/.bashrc
eval "$(starship init bash)"

Example

A custom Starship configuration showing git branch, Node.js version, and directory info:

add_newline = true

[character]
success_symbol = '[>](bold green)'
error_symbol = '[x](bold red)'

[directory]
truncation_length = 3
truncate_to_repo = true

[git_branch]
symbol = 'branch '

[nodejs]
format = 'via [node $version](bold green) '

[kubernetes]
disabled = false
format = 'on [k8s $context](blue) '

This produces a prompt like: ~/projects/my-app branch main via node v20.11 on k8s prod >

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Common pitfalls

• Nerd Fonts are required for icons. Without them, the prompt shows garbled characters. Install a patched font from nerdfonts.com.
• Enabling too many modules slows the prompt on older machines. Disable modules you do not need in starship.toml.
• Fish shell users must use starship init fish | source syntax, not eval. The init command differs per shell.