up

up is an interactive terminal UI for building Linux command pipelines with instant live preview. It allows users to incrementally construct complex pipelines using standard Unix text-processing tools like grep, sort, cut, awk, and perl while seeing the results update in real-time in a scrollable preview window.

The tool works by accepting piped input from any command, then providing an input box where users can type bash pipeline commands. As users type and press Enter, the pipeline output appears immediately in the preview area below. This creates a fast feedback loop for exploring and processing textual data without repeatedly running commands manually.

up includes navigation controls (PgUp/PgDn, Ctrl-arrow keys) for browsing output, Ctrl-S/Ctrl-Q for freezing/unfreezing the input buffer when dealing with long-running commands, and Ctrl-X to save the final pipeline to a shell script file (up1.sh, up2.sh, etc.). The input buffer is limited to 40MB, and all pipeline commands are executed through bash -c, supporting standard bash syntax and features.

Installation

# via Homebrew
brew install up

# via FreeBSD
pkg install up

# via Binary
Download from https://github.com/akavel/up/releases/latest/download/up