here — Run containers right here, effortlessly

here is a lightweight Docker wrapper for quickly dropping into a container with sane defaults and zero config. It's meant to be used just like any shell command.

Why the name? Because it’s literally the vibe:

"Hmm, here... a node:alpine would be nice." → here -i node:alpine

Installation

You have two options to install here:

Option 1: Use install.sh to create a system-wide symlink

This will link the here script into a standard system location like /usr/local/bin or /opt/homebrew/bin.

./install.sh

Option 2: Add the repo to your PATH manually

If you'd rather avoid symlinking:

export PATH="$PATH:/path/to/this/repo/here"

You can also make this permanent by adding it to your shell config (e.g. .bashrc, .zshrc).

Basic usage

The simplest way to use here is without any config file, only with parameters:

here -i <docker image name>

This will spawn a single Docker container with default settings like workdir and current user ID. (See here -h for more information.)

Usage Examples

here -i alpine echo hi                          # Run a quick command
here -i alpine                                  # Open a shell (sh)
here -i ubuntu                                  # Open a shell (bash)
here -i ubuntu -r bash                          # Run as root
here -i node:alpine node                        # Start Node.js REPL
here -i ubuntu -u 1000:1000 bash                # Run with specific UID:GID
here -i alpine -w /app ls                       # Set a custom working directory
here -i python:3.11 -e "FOO=bar" env            # Pass an environment variable
here -i node:alpine -p 3000:3000 node server.js # Map a single port
here -i redis -p 6379:6379 -p 16379:16379       # Map multiple ports

---

Options

Option	Description
-i <image>	Docker image to use (required)
-r	Run as root (equivalent to -u 0:0)
-u <UID:GID>	Run as a specific user (default: current UID:GID)
-w <dir>	Set working directory inside container (default: /workspace)
-e <VAR=VAL>	Set environment variable inside container
-p <h:c>	Publish port mapping (host:container), can be used multiple times
-h, --help	Show help message