cailoxo

cailoxo is a small prompt generator for people who want one adaptive prompt across shells.

It reads cailoxo.toml and generates native prompt scripts for zsh, nu, and pwsh. No prompt framework is required at runtime.

Goal: same prompt shape everywhere: OS, adaptive path, Git branch/status, and transient prompt behavior.

Name

cailoxo comes from Vietnamese "cái lò xo", meaning "a spring". The ASCII spelling keeps the project name easy to type in config files, package names, and shell commands.

The name matches the prompt behavior: stretch when the terminal is wide, compress when space is tight, and adapt when the terminal resizes.

Focus

• TOML config
• native shell output for zsh, nu, and pwsh
• adaptive path truncation based on terminal width
• local Git branch and status
• optional background Git fetch outside prompt rendering
• simple transient prompt

Supported Shells

Shell ID	Shell	Default output
zsh	Zsh	output/prompt.zsh
nu	Nushell	output/prompt.nu
pwsh	PowerShell	output/prompt.ps1

Usage

Generate prompt scripts:

cailoxo generate --shell zsh
cailoxo generate --shell nu
cailoxo generate --shell pwsh

Use a custom config file with --config:

cailoxo generate --shell zsh --config ~/.config/cailoxo/theme.toml

Source generated scripts from shell startup files:

source /path/to/cailoxo/output/prompt.zsh

source /path/to/cailoxo/output/prompt.nu

. /path/to/cailoxo/output/prompt.ps1

Use --output to write generated scripts somewhere else. --config defaults to cailoxo.toml in the current directory.

Docs:

• docs/installation.md
• docs/configuration.md
• docs/template-variables.md
• docs/shell-support.md
• docs/troubleshooting.md

Quick interactive tests:

cargo run -- generate --shell zsh; tmp=$(mktemp -d); printf 'source %q/output/prompt.zsh\n' "$PWD" > "$tmp/.zshrc"; ZDOTDIR="$tmp" zsh -i

cargo run -- generate --shell nu; nu --no-config-file --execute 'source output/prompt.nu'

cargo run -- generate --shell pwsh; pwsh -NoLogo -NoProfile -Command '. ./output/prompt.ps1; prompt'

Example

   ~/labs/cailoxo/src   feature/native-prompts !1 
❯

Release

Releases are tag-driven. Push a version tag to build GitHub release assets and publish to crates.io:

git tag v0.1.0
git push origin v0.1.0

GitHub release assets include x86_64 and aarch64 binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Crates.io publish requires repository secret CARGO_REGISTRY_TOKEN.

Status

MVP complete. Current work is stabilization, docs, tests, and post-MVP features tracked in PLAN.md.