5 Tiny CLI Tricks You (Probably) Didn’t Know

1. history | grep + fzf = instant recall

Fish out that elusive command you ran last Tuesday:

history | grep docker | fzf

Hit Enter and it pastes right back to your prompt like magic.

---

2. Reverse-search a Git log by file content

Combine git log with -S (search diff) to find when a string first appeared:

git log -S"resizeObserver" --oneline -- src/components/Layout.tsx

---

3. JSON-pretty print … with zero dependencies

Mac & Linux already ship with python3:

cat response.json | python3 -m json.tool | less

---

4. One-liner port-forwarding for quick demos

Need to expose localhost:3000? Use SSH—no ngrok token needed.

ssh -R 80:localhost:3000 ssh.localhost.run

Now share the generated URL on Slack and watch eyebrows rise.

---

5. Measure anything with time + subshell

How long does your linter actually take?

time (npm run lint > /dev/null)

💡 Pro-tip: wrap this in a pre-push hook so slow commands get caught early.