Project: CLI Command Explainer
What is it?
- Run
explain <any CLI command>in your terminal - Sends the command to OpenAI and returns a concise plain-English explanation
- Useful for quickly understanding unfamiliar flags and options
Backstory
Built while going through a period of learning several new CLI tools at once. With flags and options flying around, having a fast way to understand what a command actually does — without leaving the terminal to search — turned out to be genuinely useful day-to-day.
The implementation is deliberately minimal: a single Bash function that takes the full command as input, sends it to the OpenAI API, and prints the response. No installation, no UI, just a function you source into your shell.
Example: explain ping -c 3 pnetto.com returns: "ping sends network packets to the specified host to check connectivity. -c 3 sends exactly 3 packets then stops."
Available as a GitHub Gist.
Technical details
Stack
- Bash
- OpenAI API
- ~20 lines of code