Getting scrollback in cli

[daliusd]

I have following workflow in WezTerm + fish shell: I type some command (e.g. cat ) and press alt+/ . Then from the last 100 lines I collect hashes, paths and filenames and pass that to fzf to select from and on selection I append that to my command line. (Code here https://github.com/daliusd/cfg/blob/1f157ad109281b658b3d0860fa5150d0e0731e99/.config/wezterm/wezterm.lua#L211-L328 and https://github.com/daliusd/cfg/blob/master/.config/fish/functions/wezterm-fzf-words.fish for the curious).

I wonder if I can do something like that in ghostty? Ideally I would love if it were ghostty native feature, but I think it is going to be quite hard to implement. Therefore I think it should be possible to do something like that if ghostty had command line option like: ghostty +get_scrollback or ghostty +get_screen. In that case I could bind alt+/ in fish shell and do everything it. I think it might be not that complicated to add something like that. Or maybe I am missing something and something like that already exists?

[danielwe]

There's a keybind action for saving the scrollback to a tmp file and pasting the filepath in the terminal. On MacOS it's bound to shift+cmd+j by default. Not sure on Linux, but ghostty +list-keybinds | grep screen will show you (it's the write_screen_file:paste,plain action). Try something like cat <shift+cmd+j> | fzf to get a feel for it.

Ghostty doesn't have a CLI interface to these actions yet, nor a scripting/plugin system, so the solution will have to look different from your wezterm keybind. Maybe write a shell function that takes a file path, processes the contents, and pipes the result to fzf? Then you can do myfunc <shift+cmd+j>, and by extension things like cat (myfunc <shift+cmd+j>).

[danielwe]

What exactly did you try? Does the shift+cmd+j key binding not work?

[daliusd]

Keybindings works OK. I investigated how could I use keybinding together with fish shell and fzf. I have not found good solution. Your proposals are workarounds and I want something better and more ergonomic.

[danielwe]

One possibility is adding the following to your Ghostty config:

keybind = shift+cmd+h=text:(myfunc )\x1b[D

Now, type cat , hit shift+cmd+h, then shift+cmd+j (you don't have to lift shift+cmd, so it's really more like shift+cmd+h->j). Adjust modifiers as necessary if you're on Linux.

Your command line now reads cat (myfunc <scrollback file path>). Press enter to execute.

All that remains is to implement the myfunc shell function/script/executable to do whatever you need it to!

[daliusd]

I guess that's the option, but that's 3 clicks instead of 1.

[danielwe]

Not too hard to get it down to 2. Write myfunc to read the file path from the clipboard instead, and use the following binding: EDIT: Actually, you don't even need to rewrite myfunc. Just use a clipboard CLI tool directly, like pbpaste on macOS:

keybind = shift+ctrl+cmd+h=text:(myfunc (pbpaste))\r

Now, after typing cat , hit shift+ctrl+cmd+j->h, and you're on your way. (You'll probably want to rebind these to something more ergonomic, I'm just trying to stay close to the defaults.)

If you really need to get it down to 1, I'm afraid you're going to need #2353.

[daliusd]

BTW, tried to implement my own suggestion using AI and it is not that trivial task after all. AI managed to do something what works unreliably so I give up for now.