Familiar command mode
Quoting, redirects, byte pipes, boolean lists, and jobs run natively, with Bash and Zsh islands for the rest.
Unreleased Unix candidate · 0.1
A well-stirred shell.
Your shell, with a richer vocabulary.
Quirl keeps the Bash and Zsh commands you already know, then adds explicit typed data pipelines and one sandboxed Lua 5.4 SDK for configuration, scripts, prompts, completions, and plugins.
Unreleased prototype · Linux and macOS · Built from source
❯data
∿open deployments.json | where status == "failed" | select service region
serviceregion
paymentseu-central-1
searchus-east-1
∿
One coherent system
Familiar at the prompt. Explicit underneath.
Quirl gives command bytes, structured values, and extension code distinct boundaries—then makes moving between them deliberate.
Typed data pipelines
Switch explicitly into structured values and use focused transforms instead of parsing columns with text tools.
Sandboxed Lua
One restricted, resource-budgeted Lua 5.4 runtime powers the programmable surface behind a Rust-validated boundary.
Semantic completion
One catalog drives completion, contextual help, generated docs, and AI-facing command metadata.
Designed around boundaries
Three modes of work. No hidden coercion.
Command mode moves bytes. Data mode moves typed values. Lua handles general-purpose logic inside a constrained runtime. The boundary is visible every time you cross it.
Read the language designCommandbyte streams
→Datatyped values
→Luabounded logic
The foundation is here
Documentation for the project as it exists today.
Quirl is an unreleased 0.1 Unix candidate implementation and a fast-moving prototype. The docs separate current usage and runtime contracts from long-term direction and exact-artifact evidence.