Your first session

Begin with command mode

Quirl starts where shell users expect: external commands, redirects, byte pipelines, boolean lists, and background jobs. The native grammar intentionally stays small; use an explicit Bash or Zsh island when you need behavior outside that frozen core.

ls -la | grep Cargo

Switch to typed data

Press Alt-M in an interactive session, or write an explicit data block in a native .qrl script. Data mode works with values rather than terminal text:

open deployments.json | where status == "failed" | select service region

The detailed semantics live in the typed data runtime.

Discover as you type

• Tab opens semantic completion.
• F1 opens contextual documentation from the same catalog.
• Ctrl-R opens reverse history search.
• Ctrl-T opens the file picker.
• Ctrl-K opens catalog actions.

The catalog is also the source for generated help, documentation, and AI-facing metadata, so these surfaces do not drift into separate command lists.