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gleitz/howdoi

★ 10,834PythonAudience · developerComplexity · 1/5Setup · easy

TLDR

howdoi is a command-line tool that fetches code answers from Stack Overflow and prints them directly in your terminal, so you get quick coding snippets without breaking focus to open a browser.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((howdoi))
    What it does
      Terminal code lookup
      Stack Overflow search
      Returns snippets
    Options
      Multiple answers
      Full answer text
      JSON output
      Source links
    Integrations
      Slack
      VS Code
      Emacs
      Alfred
    Setup
      pip install
      Homebrew
      Python 3.7+
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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Look up a quick code snippet in your terminal without opening a browser or leaving your editor flow.

USE CASE 2

Save frequently needed answers to a personal stash and retrieve them later without re-querying.

USE CASE 3

Integrate Stack Overflow lookup into Slack, VS Code, or Emacs via existing third-party plugins.

Tech stack

Python

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

In plain English

howdoi is a command-line tool that retrieves coding answers from Stack Overflow without requiring you to open a browser. You type a question in plain English, and it returns a code snippet directly in the terminal. For example, typing "howdoi format date bash" prints back a one-liner shell command. The idea is to keep you in the console instead of breaking focus to search the web. Installation is a single command: either "pip install howdoi" for Python users or "brew install howdoi" on a Mac with Homebrew. It requires Python 3.7 or newer. The tool supports several options. By default it returns one answer, but you can ask for multiple answers, display the full answer text rather than just the snippet, show only the link to the source, or get output in JSON format. You can also choose which search engine howdoi uses in the background (Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo) and which StackExchange site to query, which lets you ask questions about cooking or other topics the same way you would ask about code. Answers can be saved to a personal stash for later reference, viewed, individually removed, or cleared entirely. For frequently used options, the README includes an example alias you can add to your shell profile to run howdoi with colorized output and five results by default. Third-party integrations exist for Slack, Telegram, Discord, Emacs, VS Code, and Alfred on macOS, allowing the same query-and-answer workflow from chat tools and editors. The project has over a dozen listed contributors and links to a dedicated contributing guide for anyone who wants to improve it.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Install howdoi with pip and show me how to look up how to reverse a list in Python, display three alternative answers, and save the best one to my stash.
Prompt 2
Configure howdoi to use DuckDuckGo as the search engine and query the Unix StackExchange site instead of Stack Overflow.
Prompt 3
Write a shell alias I can add to my .zshrc so howdoi always runs with colorized output and returns five results by default.
Prompt 4
Walk me through setting up the howdoi VS Code extension so I can run a query without leaving my editor.
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