leadr
leadr is a customizable CLI command manager inspired by the leader key concept in (Neo)Vim. Use memorable key sequences to quickly execute or insert commands in your terminal.
🚀 Demo

💪 Features
- Customizable Mappings: Define your own key sequences to set your prompt.
- Insert or Execute: Immediately execute
git statusor just insertgit commit -m ""ready for you to fill in. - Prepend/Append: Forgot
sudo? Just prepend it to the your prompt and keep typing. - Surround: Wrap your current command in quotes or use
$(command substitution)in the blink of an eye. - Cursor Positioning: Automatically place your cursor at the right position after inserting or replacing commands.
- Evaluate pre-insert: Need the current date in your file name? Evaluate a command, then insert it.
- Keybinding Panel: In case they slipped your mind, see available mappings in a fancy looking pop-up.

🎮 Usage
After installing leadr, you can start using it by pressing the leadr keybinding followed by a key sequence.
With the default config, you can e.g. execute git status by pressing <Ctrl-g> followed by gs.
Similarly, you can pre-populate git commit -m "" by pressing <Ctrl-g> followed by gc.
Notice how your cursor is placed in between the double quotes? Neat, right?
But that's not all!
<Ctrl-g>ps will prepend sudo to your currently typed command, <Ctrl-g>y will append a pipe to the system clipboard.
Want me to continue?
Alright: <Ctrl-g>id will insert the current date wherever your cursor is, <Ctrl-g>sq will surround your current command in quotes.
You can get the tl;dr of all this by running
which will show you a list of all available mappings and their descriptions.
Consult the Configuration section to learn how to make leadr your own.
⚡️ Requirements
- bash or zsh
- crossterm compatible terminal (see their Readme for a list)
Note: I personally use
leadrinbashon Linux. I have tested it withzshon Linux but have no way to test it on macOS. I'd be happy to get some feedback about how wellleadrworks in zsh, particularly on macOS.
📦 Installation
Note: This project is still in early development, expect some breaking changes every now and then.
You can download pre-built binaries from the releases page.
Just copy the binary to a directory in your PATH and make it executable.
You can install leadr using cargo:
This will install the latest version of leadr from crates.io.
You can build leadr from source using cargo:
🐚 Shell Integration
To use leadr, simply add the following line to your shell configuration file (e.g. ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc):
# For bash
# For zsh
🛠️ Configuration
To get started configuring leadr, run leadr --init to create the default configuration files and start tweaking from there.
To overwrite the default configuration directory (see the directories crate for the default value of the config_dir) you can set the LEADR_CONFIG_DIR environment variable to your desired path.
config.toml
The main configuration file to set your leadr keybinding, tweak the keybinding panel and other global settings.
For a list of currently supported keybindings, see src/keymap.rs.
Mappings
Mappings are defined in the mappings.toml file located in the leadr config directory.
If you prefer some more structure, you can also create a mappings/ directory and define your mappings in separate and arbitrarily nested toml files inside that directory.
A mapping looks like this:
[]
= "my-command"
= "My optional command description"
= "Append" # See below for options, default: "Replace"
= true # Default: false
= true # Default: false
The only required field is command (and the key of course).
All other fields will use their default values if not specified.
You can customize the behavior of the mapping by specifying insert_type, evaluate, and execute options.
Here's an overview of the available options:
| Setting | Options | Description |
|---|---|---|
insert_type |
'Replace' (default) | Clears the current prompt and replaces it with the command. Cursor will be placed at the end of the prompt. |
| 'Insert' | Inserts the command at the current cursor position. Cursor will be placed at the end of the inserted command. | |
| 'Prepend' | Prepends the command to the current prompt. Cursor will be placed where it was before adding the prefix. | |
| 'Append' | Appends the command to the current prompt. Cursor will be placed at the end of the prompt. | |
| 'Surround' | Surrounds the current prompt, i.e. adds a prefix and a suffix. The defined command has to contain #COMMAND which will be replaced by the current prompt. The cursor will be placed at the end of the prompt. |
|
evaluate |
true or false (default) |
If true, the command will be evaluated before being inserted. |
execute |
true or false (default) |
If true, the command will be executed immediately. |
The cursor position after inserting or replacing commands can be customized by adding #CURSOR to the command.
For the git commit -m "" example, define the command as git commit -m "#CURSOR" to place the cursor between the double quotes after inserting the command.
This works for all insert types but will have no effect if evaluate or execute is set to true.
Note:
executeworks best inside atmuxsession since it can utilizetmux'ssend-keysto execute commands. Outside oftmux,leadrwill fallback toevaland manually append the command to the shell's history.
Keybinding Panel
leadr comes with a user interface that looks suspiciously similar to which-key.
It is activated by default and will pop up shortly after pressing the leadr keybinding.
You can customize the panel by modifying the panel section in the config.toml file.
Color Theme
The default color theme uses the catppuccin mocha color palette.
You can customize the colors by modifying the theme_name in the panel section of the config.toml file.
All catppuccin flavors are builtin and can be activated by setting theme_name to catppuccin-{flavor}.
Custom themes can be defined by adding themes/theme-name.toml in the leadr config directory.
To e.g. create a high contrast theme, add themes/high-contrast.toml with the following content:
= { = 255, = 255, = 0 }
= { = 0, = 0, = 0 }
= { = 255, = 0, = 0 }
= { = 255, = 255, = 255 }
= { = 255, = 255, = 255 }
= { = 192, = 192, = 192 }
and set theme_name = "high-contrast" in the config.toml file.