Hacker News: ultramann

New comment by ultramann in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"

ultramann — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 19:20:27 +0000

I’m working on shifu (https://github.com/Ultramann/shifu), a pure POSIX shell framework to create powerful CLIs.

Shifu provides: argument parsing, subcommand dispatch, help string formatting, tab completion for interactive shells, compatibility with POSIX-based shells (tested with ash, bash, dash, ksh, zsh); all in a single POSIX shell file with no dependencies.

Edit: formatting

New comment by ultramann in "Embarrassingly simple self-distillation improves code generation"

ultramann — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 13:55:35 +0000

Maybe not the thing I should be focusing on, but I was surprised this paper came from apple. I was under the impression that apples ai/LLM research was far behind the curve. I get that research is a rising tides lifts all boats situation, I just thought that I had seen lots of negative news about apples progress in the front, and heuristically haven’t seen many (any?) apple research papers make it the front page of hacker news. Wondering if anyone more familiar with apple/ai research could comment on this?

New comment by ultramann in "Show HN: Shifu – A pure POSIX shell framework to create powerful CLIs"

ultramann — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 14:11:05 +0000

Yeah, that was definitely the motivation of putting it in shell in the first place

Show HN: Shifu – A pure POSIX shell framework to create powerful CLIs

ultramann — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 12:53:28 +0000

The startup I work for has an internal, bash-based, cli that basically amounts to shared aliases with a common entrypoint. As the number of aliases has grown, I've had a desire to group functionality together in subcommands, add more help strings, and have better tab completion. I know I could convert it to, e.g., a python script, but I was curious what was possible if we continued to use bash.

I couldn't find anything that solved those problems without lots of extra machinery. I understand why, shell scripts are generally not long, and focused on a dedicated task; adding cli features to them is mostly unnecessary, many might even discourage it for many valid reasons.

Nonetheless, I considered writing this functionality myself, but that felt like a poor use of company time. So I started toying with what a framework to handle those concerns entirely in shell script would look like on the side. Thus, shifu was born. I've been working on it off and on for about a year, and think I've got a reasonable alpha release, so thought I'd share.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47573661

Points: 7

# Comments: 2

New comment by ultramann in "iPhone Air"

ultramann — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 14:17:22 +0000

I currently have a 14 pro. I use a MagSafe wallet with it (holds three cards). This allows me a not crazy, but fairly uniform, thick single object I have to grab when I leave the…anywhere. While this might not work for everyone, it works great for me.

I’m potentially considering the air because wasted z-axis space the camera bump creates, I’d use with a MagSafe wallet again, so it wouldn’t be wasted for me. I like that the built in battery is likely sufficient for a day of my use, but can be easily extended with the MagSafe battery on days where I know I’ll be using more juice, e.g. when traveling. None of these things are unique to the air; instead the overall thickness which results from my usage is the differentiator, from which I think I might derive value.

New comment by ultramann in "Show HN: ggc – A terminal-based Git CLI written in Go"

ultramann — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 12:22:37 +0000

I'm aware of go-git [0] which

> aims to be fully compatible with git, all the porcelain operations are implemented to work exactly as git does

written in pure go, therefore with a go native api.

I've never tried to use it, but it does look quite impressive to me.

[0] https://github.com/go-git/go-git

Linux on 8" Mini Laptop

ultramann — Tue, 13 May 2025 13:47:00 +0000

Article URL: https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-installed-linux-on-this-8-inch-mini-laptop-and-its-my-new-favorite-way-of-computing/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43972957

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by ultramann in "Vim plugins and config walkthrough"

ultramann — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 16:50:15 +0000

I used to use bufftabline, https://github.com/ap/vim-buftabline. I think something like it is what you're looking for? If it's not quite right for you the readme in the github repo mentions some other plugins that have similar capabilities.

I really liked bufftabline when I used it. It was lightweight and did exactly what I wanted it to do, give me an immediate visual representation of the buffers I had open in a familiar tab-like format.

Eventually I moved towards an even lighter weight setup. Take at look at this video is you're interested in anything like that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA2WjJbmmoM