Moldable Outputs 🧪🧱

Make aj’s output feel at home in your terminal: render Markdown with code blocks and syntax highlighting, keep a recent transcript, and customize behavior per shell.

🙀 This page includes ready-to-use helpers for Nushell, bash, and zsh.

🐚 Nushell (author’s version)

Drop this in ($nu.data-dir)/scripts/aj.nu and source it (or add use in your config).

export def a [text: string] {
  $env.RUST_LOG = ""
  rm -f ~/.cache/aj.history
  let question = $text
  aj ask -t default -s default $text | tee { save ~/.cache/aj.history }
  clear
  print $"($question)\n\n"
  mdcat ~/.cache/aj.history
}

export def ai [session: string] {
  aj i -t refactor_rust -s $session
}

Usage:

a "explain lifetimes with a tiny code example"
ai refactor-session-1

💡 Tip: mdcat renders Markdown beautifully with fenced code blocks. If you don’t have it, install via your package manager (e.g., Homebrew: brew install mdcat). Alternatives: glow, bat -l markdown.

🧼 bash

Add this to ~/.bashrc (then source ~/.bashrc). It mirrors the Nushell flow:

• clears any old transcript
• asks with a chosen template/session
• saves raw output to ~/.cache/aj.history
• clears the screen
• prints the prompt you asked
• pretty-renders the Markdown transcript

# aj: ask and pretty-print Markdown response
ajmd() {
  export RUST_LOG=""
  mkdir -p "$HOME/.cache"
  rm -f "$HOME/.cache/aj.history"

  local question
  question="$*"
  if [ -z "$question" ]; then
    echo "usage: ajmd <question...>" >&2
    return 2
  fi

  # Run once, save transcript
  aj ask -t default -s default "$question" | tee "$HOME/.cache/aj.history" >/dev/null

  # Present nicely
  clear
  printf "%s\n\n" "$question"

  if command -v mdcat >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    mdcat "$HOME/.cache/aj.history"
  elif command -v glow >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    glow -p "$HOME/.cache/aj.history"
  elif command -v bat >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    bat --paging=never -l markdown "$HOME/.cache/aj.history"
  else
    # Fallback without highlighting
    cat "$HOME/.cache/aj.history"
  fi
}

# aj interactive with a handy default refactor template
ajrepl() {
  local session="$1"
  if [ -z "$session" ]; then
    echo "usage: ajrepl <session-name>" >&2
    return 2
  fi
  aj i -t refactor_rust -s "$session"
}

Examples:

ajmd "write a tiny Rust iterator adapter and test"
ajrepl refactor-session-2

🌀 zsh

Add this to ~/.zshrc (then source ~/.zshrc). Same behavior as bash.

# aj: ask and pretty-print Markdown response
function ajmd() {
  export RUST_LOG=""
  mkdir -p "$HOME/.cache"
  rm -f "$HOME/.cache/aj.history"

  local question
  question="$*"
  if [[ -z "$question" ]]; then
    print -u2 "usage: ajmd <question...>"
    return 2
  fi

  aj ask -t default -s default "$question" | tee "$HOME/.cache/aj.history" >/dev/null

  clear
  printf "%s\n\n" "$question"

  if (( $+commands[mdcat] )); then
    mdcat "$HOME/.cache/aj.history"
  elif (( $+commands[glow] )); then
    glow -p "$HOME/.cache/aj.history"
  elif (( $+commands[bat] )); then
    bat --paging=never -l markdown "$HOME/.cache/aj.history"
  else
    cat "$HOME/.cache/aj.history"
  fi
}

# aj interactive with a handy default refactor template
function ajrepl() {
  local session="$1"
  if [[ -z "$session" ]]; then
    print -u2 "usage: ajrepl <session-name>"
    return 2
  fi
  aj i -t refactor_rust -s "$session"
}

Examples:

ajmd "explain pinning in Rust with a minimal example"
ajrepl rust-notes-1

💡 Notes & Tips

• Template & Session: Change -t default -s default to any template/session you prefer (e.g., -t reading_buddy, -s gita-study).
• History location: Adjust ~/.cache/aj.history if you want per-session files (e.g., ~/.cache/aj.$(date +%s).md) or per-template logs.
• Renderers:
  • mdcat → rich Markdown (links, tables, code fences)
  • glow -p→ pager mode
  • bat -l markdown → quick highlighting (no Markdown rendering)
  • Paging: To page long outputs, pipe to less -R:
    • mdcat ~/.cache/aj.history | less -R
• Noise-free: RUST_LOG="" silences Rust log output so your Markdown stays clean.

🎛️✨ Have fun molding outputs to your terminal flow!