try-rs

Rust port of tobi/try — an ephemeral workspace manager. Quickly create, fuzzy-search, and cd into date-prefixed experiment directories from your shell.

🏠 Try Directory Selection
────────────────────────────────────────────────
Search: redis
────────────────────────────────────────────────
→ 📁 2026-05-16-redis-pool                     just now, 5.2
  📁 2025-08-03-thread-pool                    9m ago, 4.1
  📁 2025-07-22-db-pooling                    2w ago, 0.6
  📂 Create new: 2026-05-16-redis
────────────────────────────────────────────────
↑/↓ Navigate  Enter Select  ^R Rename  ^G Graduate  ^D Delete  Esc Cancel

Install

Homebrew (macOS / Linux):

brew install morellodev/tap/try

From source:

cargo install --git https://github.com/morellodev/try-rs

Then add the shell wrapper to your rc file:

# bash / zsh — .bashrc or .zshrc
eval "$(try init)"

# fish — config.fish
try init | source

The wrapper is what lets try change your shell's cwd (a process can't change its parent's directory, so try emits a shell script that the wrapper evals).

Usage

try                              # open the interactive selector
try redis                        # selector pre-filtered by "redis"
try clone https://github.com/x/y # clone into 2026-05-16-x-y
try https://github.com/x/y       # bare URL also clones
try worktree feature-branch      # detached git worktree from current repo
try . my-experiment              # worktree from current dir

Inside the TUI:

Key	Action
↑ / ↓ or Ctrl-P / Ctrl-N	Navigate
Enter	Select highlighted entry, or create from "Create new" row
Ctrl-T	Create immediately from current query
Ctrl-R	Rename selected workspace
Ctrl-G	"Graduate" — move to a permanent location and leave a symlink
Ctrl-D	Mark for deletion (multiple); press Enter then type YES to confirm
Ctrl-A / Ctrl-E / Ctrl-B / Ctrl-F / Ctrl-K / Ctrl-W	Line editing
Esc / Ctrl-C	Cancel (in delete mode: clear marks instead)

Configuration

Variable	Default	Effect
TRY_PATH	~/src/tries	Where workspaces live
TRY_PROJECTS	parent of TRY_PATH	Default destination when graduating
NO_COLOR	unset	Disable ANSI color output (any non-empty value)

You can also pass --path DIR on any command and --no-colors to disable color.

What's different from the Ruby upstream

Behaviorally identical — the project tracks the upstream spec test suite and passes all 387 cases. Implementation differences:

• Native binary; no Ruby runtime needed.
• Color palette redesigned for accessibility — no row backgrounds, emphasis from bold + arrow + icon. Works on light and dark terminal themes.
• Ctrl-K is kill-to-end-of-line (matches the upstream code; the upstream docs occasionally list it as a navigation alias, but the runtime behavior is the editing one).

Building

cargo build --release                                # binary at target/release/try
cargo test                                           # 117 unit + doc tests
./spec/tests/runner.sh ./target/release/try          # full upstream spec runner

Requires Rust 1.91+ (edition 2024; uses str::floor_char_boundary).

License

MIT, same as the upstream project.

Credits

All credit for the original concept, UX, and reference implementation goes to @tobi. This port preserves the upstream's behavior contract via the vendored spec/ test suite.