Make Bash a structured language.

Bash is powerful and widely available, but easy to write in a way that is hard to read and maintain. argsh provides the building blocks to write Bash code that is structured, tested, and production-ready.

local -a args=(
  'name|n:!'    "Your name"
  'age|a:~int'  "Your age"
  'verbose|v:+' "Verbose output"
)
:args "Greet someone" "${@}"

Flags, types, defaults, validation, and --help — from a plain array.

local -a usage=(
  'deploy|d' "Deploy the app"
  'status|s' "Show status"
)
:usage "App manager" "${@}"

Convention-based routing with fuzzy typo suggestions.

Optional loadable builtins compiled from Rust run natively inside the Bash process — zero fork overhead, zero subshell cost.

• 10 flags — Pure Bash 5405 ms → Builtin 4 ms (1351x)
• 50 flags — Pure Bash 29603 ms → Builtin 20 ms (1480x)

./myscript mcp              # MCP server (stdio)
./myscript docgen llm claude # Anthropic tool schema
./myscript docgen llm openai # OpenAI function calling

Every argsh script is an MCP server and LLM tool — no glue code.

• argsh test — Run .bats tests with auto-discovery
• argsh lint — shellcheck + argsh-specific checks (AG001–AG013)
• argsh coverage — Coverage reports with minimum threshold
• argsh docs — Generate Markdown, man, RST, YAML from comments
• argsh minify — Bundle + minify + obfuscate into a single script
• LSP + Debugger — Full IDE support with completions, diagnostics, formatting, and step-through debugging
• Plugin system — Install, publish, and manage libraries via OCI registries

Everything runs locally when available, transparently forwards to Docker otherwise.

curl -sL https://min.arg.sh > .bin/argsh && chmod +x .bin/argsh

Or use the interactive installer:

bash -c "$(curl -sL https://get.arg.sh)"

• argsh — Core framework, builtins, LSP, and tooling
• libs — Community plugin libraries (jaml, ...)

Copyright © 2026-present Jan Guth