Shell Completion

Recursivist supports tab completion for Bash, Zsh, Fish, and PowerShell. Once enabled, pressing Tab completes commands, options, and path arguments.

Recommended: Built-in Installer

Recursivist is built with Typer, which provides two top-level options for completion:

# Install completion for the shell you're currently using
recursivist --install-completion

# Print the completion script for your current shell (to inspect or redirect)
recursivist --show-completion

--install-completion detects your shell, writes the appropriate completion script, and wires it into your shell configuration. Restart your shell (or open a new terminal) afterwards for it to take effect. This is the simplest and most reliable way to enable completion.

The completion Command

The completion command prints the completion script for a named shell to standard output, so you can save it wherever that shell loads completions from. Unlike --show-completion, it takes the shell name explicitly rather than detecting the current one, which is useful for generating a script for a shell other than the one you're in:

recursivist completion SHELL

where SHELL is bash, zsh, fish, or powershell. Only the script is written to stdout; a short usage hint is written to stderr, so redirecting stdout to a file captures the script by itself.

Save the printed script to the location your shell reads completions from, then restart your shell (or open a new terminal):

Shell	Install the printed script
Bash	recursivist completion bash >> ~/.bashrc
Zsh	recursivist completion zsh > ~/.zfunc/_recursivist (see note below)
Fish	recursivist completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/recursivist.fish
PowerShell	recursivist completion powershell >> $PROFILE

For Zsh, the target directory must be on your fpath and compinit must run. If you don't already have a completions directory set up, add this to ~/.zshrc before any compinit call:

fpath=(~/.zfunc $fpath)
autoload -U compinit; compinit

then create the directory and write the script:

mkdir -p ~/.zfunc
recursivist completion zsh > ~/.zfunc/_recursivist

Tip: If you only need completion for your current shell, recursivist --install-completion generates the script and places it correctly in one step.

Using Completion

Once set up, completion works throughout the CLI:

recursivist [Tab]              # lists visualize, export, compare, config, ...
recursivist visualize --[Tab]  # lists --exclude, --depth, --sort-by-loc, ...
recursivist visualize ~/pro[Tab]  # completes the path

Troubleshooting

If completion doesn't activate:

1. Make sure you restarted the shell (or opened a new terminal) after installing.
2. Confirm your shell's completion system is enabled. For Zsh, that means compinit is loaded:

autoload -U compinit; compinit

1. Re-run recursivist --install-completion and check for any reported errors.