coreutil(1) — the command-line toolkit you already reach for

NAME

coreutil — a single, fast binary that bundles the command-line utilities you already reach for, with a cloud that remembers your machines.

SYNOPSIS

coreutil [--global-flags] command [args]
coreutil find [-x] [--depth n] pattern [path...]
coreutil watch [--every dur] cmd
coreutil cloud push | pull | run pipeline

DESCRIPTION

coreutil replaces a drawer full of half-remembered flags with one binary that does the obvious thing fast. grep that understands .gitignore. find that does not hang on network mounts. watch that diffs output instead of redrawing it. It is 3.1 MB, has zero runtime dependencies, and starts in under 4 ms.

It is free, open source (Apache-2.0), and installs in one line. When you want your tools to follow you across machines and CI, coreutil cloud syncs your config and runs your pipelines on managed runners — see CLOUD, below.

install curl -fsSL coreutil.dev/install | sh

~/src/coreutil — zsh

COMMANDS

The toolkit ships nine subcommands. The frequently-used flags:

find -x, --exec cmd: Recursively locate paths. Respects .gitignore by default; pass --all to include ignored files. --exec runs cmd per match with parallel scheduling across all cores.
grep -i, --smart-case: Search file contents with a Rust regex engine. --smart-case is case-insensitive until your pattern contains an uppercase letter. Binary files are skipped unless you pass -a.
watch --every dur, --diff: Re-run a command on an interval. With --diff, only the lines that changed are highlighted, so a noisy kubectl get pods stops flickering.
jq -r, --raw-output: A drop-in, faster JSON processor. Streams multi-gigabyte logs without buffering the whole document into memory.
cloud push | pull | run: Sync your ~/.coreutil config to the cloud, or execute a declared pipeline on a managed runner. Requires a free account; see CLOUD.

EXIT STATUS

The coreutil utility exits 0 on success, 1 if no matches were found, and >1 if an error occurred. This is deliberately grep-compatible so it slots into existing scripts unchanged.

PERFORMANCE

Measured on a 2.3 GB checkout of the Linux kernel source, warm cache, median of 30 runs. Lower is better.

TASK                       legacy tool     coreutil      speedup
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
recursive grep, 1 pattern     2.41 s        0.182 s        13.2×
find by glob, 380k files      0.94 s        0.071 s        13.2×
jq over 4 GB ndjson           38.7 s         9.10 s         4.3×
cold start (no-op)            18.0 ms        3.7 ms         4.9×
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
binary size                    n/a          3.1 MB           —
runtime dependencies           n/a          0                —

41,238GitHub stars

612contributors

9subcommands

3.1MBsingle binary

CLOUD

The CLI is free forever. coreutil cloud is the paid service that syncs your config across machines and runs your declared pipelines on managed, isolated runners — the same tools, anywhere, with shared team config and audit logs.

HACKER

$0/mo

the full CLI, forever
1 synced machine
100 pipeline runs / mo
community support

For everyone. No account needed for the CLI itself.

most installs

PRO

$9/mo

unlimited synced machines
10,000 pipeline runs / mo
private pipeline registry
4 vCPU managed runners

For individual developers who live in the terminal.

TEAM

$29/seat

everything in Pro
shared team config & secrets
SSO / SCIM, audit logs
16 vCPU runners, priority queue

For teams who want one toolchain, version-pinned.

Prices in USD. coreutil cloud run bills runner-seconds; the included quotas cover typical CI use. Self-hosted runners are free on every plan.

AUTHORS

coreutil was started in 2021 by Priya Nair and is maintained by a community of 612 contributors across 40 countries. It is governed by an open RFC process; the core team merges, but the toolkit belongs to the people who type it.

REPORTING BUGS

From the people who file the issues:

“I deleted four shell aliases and a 200-line dotfile the day I installed this. It just does the right thing.”
— m. okafor, platform eng, a CDN you've heard of

“coreutil watch --diff alone paid for the Pro plan in the first hour. Our on-call dashboards stopped strobing.”
— t. lindqvist, SRE

“We pinned one binary in CI and three flaky tool versions across the fleet just… stopped being a problem.”
— j. delacroix, infra lead, fintech