Modern CLI Tools Every Developer Should Know

The terminal is a developer’s home. Here are the tools that make it comfortable.

bat — cat with wings

bat is a cat clone with syntax highlighting, git integration, and line numbers:

bat src/lib/data/resume.ts

It auto-detects language and pipes through a pager for long files.

fd — find, but fast

fd is a faster, more intuitive find:

fd '.svelte$' src/

Defaults to recursive, respects .gitignore, and supports regex patterns.

ripgrep (rg) — grep on steroids

rg recursively searches file contents at blazing speed:

rg 'TODO' --type-add 'svelte:*.svelte' -t svelte

zoxide — smarter cd

zoxide learns your directory habits and jumps with a few keystrokes:

z svelte  # jumps to ~/Documents/svelte

No more cd ../../.. — just z project-name.

fzf — fuzzy find everything

fzf is a general-purpose fuzzy finder. Pipe anything into it:

ctrl-r  # fuzzy-search shell history
ctrl-t  # fuzzy-search files

lazygit — git made visual

Terminal UI for git operations. Stage, commit, branch, rebase — all with vim-style keybindings and a clean TUI.

OpenCode + CLI

OpenCode itself runs in the terminal and uses these tools internally for file search, grep, and navigation. When you ask it to find something, it’s using ripgrep and fd under the hood — the same tools you should be using daily.