try-bedazzled

A modern, themeable scratch-directory manager inspired by tobi/try-cli.

A Go rewrite using Charmbracelet — the same dated-throwaway-folder workflow, now with shifting cursor hues, rainbow fuzzy hits, gradient row highlights, and a theme picker that lets you turn the sparkle up to 11 (or all the way down to a calm monochrome — every preference welcome). 🦄

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What it does

try gives every experiment a dated home directory and a fast fuzzy selector to jump back into it:

─────────────────────────────────────────
 ▸ redis                         4 matches
─────────────────────────────────────────
▸ 📂 2026-04-14  redis-cluster         3h ago
  📦 2026-04-12  redis-sentinel        2d ago
  🦀 2026-04-11  redis-rs-bench        3d ago
  📂 2026-04-09  redis-lua-scripts     5d ago
─────────────────────────────────────────
  enter select  •  ctrl-d delete  •  ctrl-r rename  •  ctrl-p preview on  •  ctrl-g settings  •  esc quit

Type to filter. Press Enter to cd. Type a new name and press Enter to create. That's it.

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Install

Homebrew (macOS, Linux):

brew install hmk/tap/try-bedazzled

curl (everywhere else):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hmk/try-bedazzled/main/install.sh | sh

Then restart your shell (or source ~/.zshrc) and run try.

The curl installer drops the signed-and-notarized binary in /usr/local/bin/ and adds the shell function to your rc file. The Homebrew formula prints the same one-line shell-config snippet on first install (brew info try-bedazzled).

For other install paths (Go, manual download, custom directory), see INSTALL.md.

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Commands

Command	What it does
try	Open the fuzzy selector
try redis	Pre-filter the selector for "redis"
try clone <url> [name]	Git clone into a dated directory
try worktree <name>	Git worktree (or mkdir if not in a repo)
try theme	Interactive theme picker with live preview
try settings	Open the settings menu
try init [path]	Print shell integration script

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Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
Type	Filter (fuzzy, real-time)
↑ / ↓ or Ctrl-K / Ctrl-J	Navigate
Enter	Select / create / confirm delete
Ctrl-D	Mark/unmark entry for deletion
Ctrl-R	Rename (preserves date prefix)
Ctrl-P	Toggle file-tree preview panel
Ctrl-G	Open settings menu
Esc	Cancel

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The Bedazzling

Themes

Five built-in themes, switchable live with try theme — pick your sparkle level:

Theme	Vibe
bedazzled (default)	🌈 Catppuccin Mocha pastels under a full rainbow finish — rainbow search rules, shifting cursor hues, rainbow fuzzy hits, gradient row highlight
rainbow	💖 Hot-pink accent, all rainbow, all the time — the loudest one
catppuccin	🍮 Catppuccin Mocha pastels, sparkle dialed back
dracula	🧛 Dark and saturated
minimal	🪨 ASCII-safe, no unicode, no glitter — perfect for CI logs and quiet terminals

Set in config or override per-session:

# ~/.config/try/config.toml
theme = "catppuccin"

TRY_THEME=dracula try redis

Drop a .toml in ~/.config/try/themes/ to add your own:

# ~/.config/try/themes/nord.toml
[colors]
accent  = "#88C0D0"
dim     = "#4C566A"
text    = "#ECEFF4"
match   = "#EBCB8B"
danger  = "#BF616A"
success = "#A3BE8C"

[symbols]
cursor  = "▸"
folder  = "📂"

[layout]
show_icons   = true
show_date    = "right"
show_time    = true
search_style = "bordered"

Content-aware icons

The icon registry reads slug words to pick a project-appropriate emoji automatically:

Slug word	Icon
go, golang	🐹
rust	🦀
python, py	🐍
postgres, pg	🐘
redis	📦
docker, k8s	🐳
react, vue, svelte	⚛️
ml, llm, ai	🤖
…and 50+ more

Override or extend with your own in config:

[custom_icons]
django   = "🎭"
temporal = "⏱"
shopify  = "🛍"

Live folder preview

Press Ctrl-P to toggle a live file-tree preview of the highlighted directory inline in the selector. State persists across launches — turn it off once, it stays off.

Settings menu

try settings (or Ctrl-, inside the selector) opens a Huh form that covers every preference and writes ~/.config/try/config.toml:

• Theme
• Display mode (fullscreen / inline)
• Preview panel default
• Emoji icons toggle
• Add custom slug→icon mappings

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Configuration

Full config reference:

# ~/.config/try/config.toml

tries_path      = "~/tries"          # where your directories live
theme           = "bedazzled"        # built-in or custom theme name
display_mode    = "inline"           # "inline" | "fullscreen" (alt screen)
inline_min_rows = 15                 # minimum rows in inline mode
preview_enabled = true               # file-tree preview panel
show_emojis     = true               # folder/type icons

[custom_icons]
django = "🎭"
rust   = "🦀"

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Performance

Benchmarked on macOS (Apple Silicon M4) with 100 try directories:

Operation	C (try-cli)	Go (try-bedazzled)	Ruby (try)
Startup + scan	1.5 ms	2.4 ms	40 ms
Fuzzy match + select	2.0 ms	3.7 ms	44 ms
Version (startup only)	1.2 ms	2.0 ms	36 ms
Binary size	92 KB	5.1 MB	interpreted

Go is ~1.6× slower than C for raw operations, but 15–20× faster than Ruby — and you trade those microseconds for a wardrobe full of rainbows.

Measured with hyperfine. Reproduce with bench/bench.sh.

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Architecture

cmd/try/main.go
internal/
  cli/       Cobra commands: init, exec, clone, worktree, theme, settings
  dirs/      Directory scanning, naming, date-prefix parsing, slug normalization
  fuzzy/     Scoring algorithm (ported from tobi/try-cli's C)
  shell/     Shell script generation (cd, mkdir, delete, rename, init wrappers)
  theme/     TOML theming, icon registry, config read/write, built-in themes
  tui/       Bubble Tea model, Lip Gloss styles, theme picker table, file tree

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Credits

Inspired by Tobias Lutke's original try (Ruby) and try-cli (C). Built with Charmbracelet libraries: Bubble Tea, Lip Gloss, Bubbles, Huh.

License

BSD 3-Clause