inshellah/doc/runtime-completions.md

runtime completion resolution

the complete command has built-in on-the-fly resolution: when a command is not found in the index, it falls back to running --help, caches the result, and returns completions immediately. this means commands installed outside the system profile (via cargo, pip, npm, go, etc.) get completions on first tab-press with no manual setup.

how it works

when you type docker compose up --<TAB>:

1. nushell calls inshellah complete docker compose up --
2. inshellah looks up the index for the longest matching prefix
3. if found, it fuzzy-matches flags and subcommands against the partial input
4. if not found, it locates the binary in $PATH, runs --help, recursively resolves subcommands, caches the results in the user directory ($XDG_CACHE_HOME/inshellah), and returns completions

all subsequent completions for that command are instant (served from cache).

setup

the completer works with no extra configuration beyond the basic setup:

# ~/.config/nushell/config.nu
$env.config.completions.external = {
    enable: true
    completer: {|spans|
        inshellah complete ...$spans
        | from json
    }
}

with the nixos module, add --system-dir to also search the system index:

$env.config.completions.external = {
    enable: true
    completer: {|spans|
        inshellah complete ...$spans --system-dir /run/current-system/sw/share/inshellah
        | from json
    }
}

or use the snippet option provided by the flake module (see nixos.md).

cache management

the user cache lives at $XDG_CACHE_HOME/inshellah (typically ~/.cache/inshellah).

# list cached commands
inshellah dump

# view cached data for a command
inshellah query docker

# clear cache
rm -rf ~/.cache/inshellah/

# re-index from a prefix
inshellah index /usr --dir ~/.cache/inshellah

when to use this vs build-time indexing

the nixos module (programs.inshellah.enable = true) handles system packages at build time. runtime resolution covers:

• commands installed outside the system profile (cargo, pip, npm, go)
• subcommand completions at arbitrary depth
• systems without the nixos module

for upfront indexing on non-nixos systems:

inshellah index /usr /usr/local