vibeutils

Memory-safe Unix utilities written in Zig, inspired by GNU coreutils and OpenBSD.

MIT Licensed • Linux • macOS • BSD

What's Different

vibeutils covers the 80% of GNU coreutils you actually use, with modern terminal enhancements that activate automatically.

ls gains the most:

• --icons — Nerd Font file type icons
• --git — inline git status per file
• --time-style=relative — "2 hours ago" instead of timestamps (default in long format)

Across all utilities:

• Colored --help with syntax-highlighted flags
• Smart terminal detection (NO_COLOR, 256-color, truecolor)
• Graceful degradation to plain text in pipes and dumb terminals

Project Status

Pre-1.0 (v0.8.0): 47 utilities with 100% POSIX flag coverage (288 MUST + 220 SHOULD). Expect breaking changes as we refine the design.

Implemented Utilities

File Operations cat cp dd ln mkdir mktemp mv rm rmdir touch

File Information df du find ls readlink realpath stat

Text Processing cut grep head nl sort tac tail tee tr uniq wc

Path & Names basename dirname pwd

User & Permissions chmod chown id whoami

System & Process date env free seq sleep timeout

Output & Control echo false printf test true yes

Installation

Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

brew install kelp/tap/vibeutils

Commands install with a v prefix (vls, vcp, vmv) to avoid conflicts with system utilities. To use without prefix:

export PATH="$(brew --prefix)/opt/vibeutils/libexec/vibebin:$PATH"

Nix

# Try it out
nix shell github:kelp/vibeutils

# Build locally
nix build github:kelp/vibeutils

Prebuilt binaries are available via Cachix. Without this, Nix builds from source (requires Zig):

cachix use vibeutils

Persistent install (nix-darwin / home-manager)

Add vibeutils as a flake input. Do not use inputs.nixpkgs.follows — that changes the derivation hash and forces a build from source instead of pulling prebuilt binaries from Cachix.

# flake.nix
inputs.vibeutils.url = "github:kelp/vibeutils";

# home.nix
home.packages = [ inputs.vibeutils.packages.${pkgs.system}.default ];

The vibeutils flake lock is updated weekly via CI, so its nixpkgs stays current.

Nix installs use original names (no prefix) since Nix environments are isolated.

Build from source

Requirements: Zig 0.15.2 or later

git clone https://github.com/kelp/vibeutils.git
cd vibeutils
zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseSafe

Find binaries in zig-out/bin/.

Development

just build          # Build all utilities
just test           # Run unit tests
just it             # Run integration tests
just coverage       # Coverage report
just fmt            # Format code
just                # List all recipes

# Single utility
just build-util grep
just test-util grep
just run grep -- -r TODO src/

Testing

• Unit tests embedded in each source file
• Integration tests in tests/utilities/
• Privileged tests via fakeroot
• Target: 90%+ coverage

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file.