[FEATURE] Shell escape that doesn't feed output to LLM context
Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 0 comments · opened Sep 25, 2026
Problem
! command runs a shell command and sends the output into the conversation as a turn, consuming context tokens. Sometimes you want to run a quick command — check a file, test something, reference output — without it eating into your context budget.
This is especially painful in long-running sessions where context is scarce, or when the command produces large output (e.g. cat on a big file, grep across a codebase) that you only need to glance at, not have the LLM reason about.
Proposal
A "quiet" shell escape — something like !! command or /shell command — that:
- Executes the command in the user's shell
- Displays the output in the TUI
- Does not add the output (or the command) to the LLM context
The command and its output would be visible to the user but invisible to the model.
Use cases
- Referencing large files without burning tokens
- Running
git log,git diff,ls, etc. for orientation - Testing a command before deciding whether to ask the LLM to run it
- Scrollback reference during long sessions