extendo-cli

ext — a terminal picker for your clipboard history. Press a number, the item is back on your pasteboard, and you are back at the prompt.

install

brew install tjq/tap/ext

Or build it:

go build -o ext ./cmd/ext

macOS only.

ctrl-G

ext install

Binds ctrl-G to the picker, so it opens over whatever you are typing. It never types into your line — picking only puts the item on the pasteboard — and it prints nothing, so the screen you pressed it over is the screen you get back. Errors go on zsh's status line, which the next keystroke clears. Open a new terminal afterwards, or source the file it names.

For a different chord:

ext install --key ctrl-t

ctrl-t, ^T and t all name the same one. It binds ctrl plus a letter, and refuses the few the terminal needs for itself — ctrl-c, ctrl-d, ctrl-z and the rest — rather than leaving you without an interrupt.

It appends a managed block to ~/.zshrc (zsh) or ~/.bash_profile (bash), between # >>> extendo-cli >>> markers. Re-running replaces the block rather than adding a second, so it is safe after every upgrade, and

ext install --uninstall

takes it back out and leaves the rest of the file alone. --profile <file> names a different file. Everything except ctrl-G works without the block.

ctrl-G over a running program

The block above binds ctrl-G in your shell, so it only fires at the shell's own prompt. At a sudo password prompt, in vim, or inside a REPL, that program owns the terminal and the shell is blocked waiting for it — the key goes to the program and the binding never runs. No shell binding can change that.

tmux reads keys before the pane's program does, so bind it there instead:

ext install --tmux

That writes the same managed block to ~/.tmux.conf (or ~/.config/tmux/tmux.conf if you keep one), binding ctrl-G to a display-popup that runs the picker. The popup is a pane of its own, so nothing is drawn on the terminal the paused program is holding and nothing is typed into it — pick an item and you are back at the password prompt with the item on your pasteboard, exactly as you left it. Reload with tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf.

--key works here too, and --tmux --uninstall takes it back out. It needs tmux 3.2 or newer, which is where display-popup arrived; ext install --tmux checks first and refuses rather than writing a line that would stop tmux reading the rest of your config. Unlike the shell block it does not care what shell you run, so it is also the one way to get the hotkey under fish.

Both blocks can coexist — tmux sees the key first, so inside tmux it wins. Outside tmux, your terminal emulator can do the same job:

# kitty.conf
map ctrl+g launch --type=overlay ext --quiet

ext doctor reports which of these you have.

keys

The picker shows ten items a page, labelled 1..9 then 0.

key	action
1–9, 0	copy that row and exit — 0 is the tenth
c	copy the highlighted row and exit
↑ ↓ / k j	move the cursor
← → / h l	flip a page
p	pin or unpin the highlighted item
d	delete it, permanently
s	reveal a masked credential; again to hide it
⏎ / tab	preview the highlighted item — any key returns
/	search; ⏎ keeps the filter and hands the number row back, esc clears it
q / esc	quit — esc clears an active filter first
ctrl+c	quit from anywhere, including the preview and the query field

The number row acts on the row it names wherever the cursor is, so the common case is one keystroke.

commands

command
ext	the picker on a terminal; the list table when the output is piped
ext list	table of the history; --json for an array meant for scripts
ext get <n|id>	copy an item; --print writes its text to stdout instead
ext pin <n|id>	toggle the pin
ext delete <n|id>	remove it (aliased rm)
ext version	print the version

<n> is the number the list prints — pinned first, then newest — and <id> is any unambiguous prefix of an item's id.

ext list
ext get 3          # back on the pasteboard
ext get 3 --print  # to stdout, byte for byte
ext list --json | jq -r '.[] | select(.pinned) | .label'

Confirmations go to stderr and the payload to stdout, so ext get 3 --print pipes cleanly.

flags

ext --ascii    # txt / img / fil stand-ins for the glyph columns
ext --nerd     # Nerd Font icons; needs a patched font

EXTENDO_ASCII=1 and EXTENDO_NERD=1 do the same. NO_COLOR turns colour off, and EXTENDO_STORE_DIR points ext at a different history directory.

ext --quiet     # -q; no ✓ line, errors still reported

--quiet works on every command. It is what the hotkey bindings pass, so a key pressed over something else leaves no trace on that screen; the payload of ext get --print is unaffected.