If I wanted to recommend to someone the min-maxed, highest density thing they could add to their prompt, it would simply be the time your current prompt appeared + the amount of time the last command you ran took.

These two pieces of information together make it very easy for you (or your local sysadmin (or an LLM looking over your digital shoulder)) to piece together a log of exactly what happened when. This kind of psuedo-non-repudiation can be invaluable for debugging sessions when you least expect it.

This was a tip I distilled from Michael W. Lucas's Networking for System Administrators a few years ago, which remains my preferred recommendation for any developers looking to learn just enough about networking to not feel totally lost when talking to an actual network engineer.

Bonus nerd points if you measure time in seconds since the UNIX epoch. Very easy and fast to run time delta calculations if you do that:

    [0 1719242840] $ echo "foo"
    [0 1719242905] $ echo "fell asleep before hitting enter" && sleep 5
    [5 1719242910] $

Personally, over time, I have stopped caring too much about prompt customization. I concluded that, no matter how carefully you curate your prompt, 90% of the information shown will be irrelevant 90% of the time*. After a while, your brain will start perceiving this as visual clutter and filter it out, to the point you may even forget the information is there, right in front of your eyes.

And for the things that matter, you probably need more details than any prompt can show you. E.g. are there changes in your git branch? Ok there are, good to know, but which files have changed? Just knowing that there are changes is not really actionable information. You need to run additional commands to get actionable details.

* the numbers are completely arbitrary, but you get the picture

By default my prompt is a shows me the current directory, the time, and a single character '%'. If I set something in my environment for which I need to be contextually aware - i.e if I have KUBECONFIG or OS_CLOUD - then the prompt is updated with the detail. Similar for languages - it'll automatically show me the version of Go or Python or whatever based on a few factors, all of which I can control.

The reason I love Starship is that it's made all this very, very easy to configure - instead of having to wade through arcane Zsh configuration or additional plugins, Starship makes it easy. It also adds negligible overhead to initialisation, especially when done so via evalcache [0]

[0] https://github.com/mroth/evalcache

Love the performance. Written in Rust and compiled to binary, it's _much_ faster than either python-based powerline, the bash-shell-based ohmybash and zshell-based ohmyzsh and spaceship.

You can use it for zsh, bash, sh, fish. but you can also use it for both MS Windows CMD and Powershell. I don't believe any other prompt tools can do all at the same time. And a single config file can control all of them on your system.

The default config is just that - a default. Too much information? you can change it. dont like icons? you can remove them.

At almost 100 modules to choose from, it's customization options are nearly limitless

My shell prompt is:

    : ▶

Given that I do like my shiny prompt, which shows me:

  The result of the last command (in green, red, or purple)
  user@host:currentDirectory
  current branch, if in a repo

(Green: Last command good, e.g., exit 0) (Red: Last command non-zero exit, with a special indicator if it was interrupted) (Purple: Last command suspended, and few other things)

It's very minimal while having useful features: - exit codes, even for pipelines - git branch, status (displayed as a dot if your tree is dirty) and ahead/behind counts - command execution time (if above some configurable threshold) - truncated/minified $CWD, always maintaining the git root's name (I sometimes like it, sometimes don't; fortunately, it's very easy to change) - current vi-like mode (I don't use that)

It's very fast and async (prompt repaints don't block your input or running commands), and totals 132 lines of fish (according to cloc[1]). It's also very customisable through variables, which can be declared as universal to instantly change on all sessions you have open.

If you're on fish and like this feature set, definitely give it a shot, or at least look at the code as a base for a bespoke prompt :P

[0]: https://github.com/jorgebucaran/hydro [1]: https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc

I like to keep things very simple and fast, so the directory and the git branch is all I need. I wonder if people really use all that information or if they set it up thinking they need it, but then never do.

[1]: https://git.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/gosh

[2]: I should probably update that now that I know a “bit” more Go.

I usually like simple prompt, but there is one feature I really like, it's the timestamp. It helps me remember when I did something and how long it tooks.

I know not everyone likes blinged out shells, but if you're a ZSH user, it fits very well into the Prezto/oh-my-zsh model.

https://github.com/iloveitaly/dotfiles/blob/master/.config/s...

This makes a nasty "flashing" effect.

If I keep Enter pressed, the cursor is permanently visible at offset 0 in the lowest line.

If the prompt is ultra-fast (e.g. plain root shell prompt on zsh), it happens less (e.g. only 50% of cases), but as soon as the prompt does anything, it's very visible.

I observe this with many terminals (gnome-terminal, wezterm, kitty, alacritty, xterm).

The only terminal I tried that doesn't have this problem is urxvt, where it looks perfect.

Video repro: https://nh2.me/flashing-cursors-on-newline.mp4

Why, and is there a way around it for those other terminals?

- See current git branch (to not mistakenly work or commit into the wrong branch)

- See git has changes (to stash them before switching branches)

- See the current language/engine version (like go v1.24.2, because i use tools like gvm, sdk, nvm or rustup to switch version in projects and i want feedback that i have the correct/expected language version enabled)

- See that i am on my local or a remote machine and k8s context

That's mostly it. Of course, I can do this by writing my own prompt, but I found out that Starship does this for me, basically out of the box, on any machine and terminal, in a very nice-looking way. Also, I am not a fan of fancy-looking prompts, so visually, Starship fits best for me.

ends up looking like this: https://github.com/bbkane/dotfiles/blob/master/zsh/README_im...

It would be nice to have a comparison and reasons to change from popular tools.

    curl <url> | sh

At the very end of the whole process, the whole stuff would vanish into writing PS1="$ " at the end of your ~/.bashrc

Of course, the very same prompt was used whatever your install could be. I think it was some joke making fun of all these crazy and heavy custom prompts all around.

Maybe it's finally time for me to sit down and write my own shell prompt once and for all. I wonder if I can make it context-aware of fish's editing vs normal mode when vi mode is enabled

I've always wondered why someone doesn't just bundle a nice looking shell prompt with common nerd fonts and make it the default in a single package you can install.

https://github.com/joeyagreco/dotfiles/blob/main/.config/sta...

EDIT: oh, i misunderstood, its just the prompt at the start of your shell... I dont think ive ever been annoyed at how fast that renders either

      ~

Configuring it with home-manager was as simple as:

programs.starship.enable = true;