Practical guides · 04
Find a command you ran last week, without retyping it from memory.
You solved this once already. Search for it by the words you remember, load it into the input bar, and check it again before it runs.
4 minute read
The command that cleaned up a build folder or found the process holding a port usually turns up again a week later, when the exact flags are gone from memory. Rebuilding it from scratch is slow and easy to get slightly wrong. AITerm keeps four separate ways to find things, and each answers a different question.
1. Start with the command palette when you remember a word.
Press ⌘K and type what you remember. Recent commands are matched against both the command itself and the plain-English request that produced it, so largest files can find a command even if you never typed those words into the shell. Exact matches rank first, then prefixes, then partial matches, with a boost for commands run in the current folder and for recent ones.
Selecting a result loads it into the input bar. It does not run until you press Return or click Run.
2. Open the history browser when you want to look through the list.
Press ⌘Y to open the history browser. It searches the commands you have run and their original requests. Each row offers Send to input and Copy. With AITerm Pro, a row can also be saved as a runbook. Clear empties the history, so use it only when you mean it.
3. Search the scrollback when you need the output, not the command.
Sometimes the thing you want is what a command printed: a path, a port number, an error line. Press ⌘F to search the whole scrollback in the current terminal. A counter shows where you are among the matches; ⌘G and ⌘⇧G move to the next and previous match, and Escape closes the search.
To move through a long session one command at a time, ⌘⇧↑ and ⌘⇧↓ jump between the starts of commands. That navigates command boundaries; it is not a text search.
4. Check an old command again before you run it.
A command that was right last week can be wrong today. Before pressing Return, confirm you are in the folder it expects, that the files or branches it names still exist, and that its risk badge looks the way you expect. Edit it in the input bar if anything has changed. The same three checks for AI-suggested commands apply to a command you found in history.
When you only remember what it did.
If none of the words you remember appear in the command, AITerm Pro adds a labeled Related by meaning group to the ⌘K palette. It uses a small local model through Ollama, and ordinary text matches always rank first. Ordinary history search does not need it and is part of the free core app.
According to the handbook, your command history and the search indexes built from it stay on your Mac and feed the palette; they are not sent to an AI provider. That is separate from the session context an AI request may include, which our guide to what your AI terminal sends explains.
A two-minute practice run.
- Open a new tab in a folder with nothing private in it.
- Type a plain-English request such as show the largest files in this folder, review the suggested command, and run it.
- Run one or two other harmless commands, such as
pwdandls. - Press ⌘K, type largest, and select the result. Notice that it waits in the input bar instead of running.
- Press Escape, then press ⌘F and search the scrollback for a file name from the earlier output.
Try it in AITerm.
Command history, the ⌘K palette and scrollback search are part of the free core app, along with AI command suggestions, /fix, /explain, tabs, split panes, saved workspaces, Ollama and supported bring-your-own-key connections. Search by meaning and runbooks are Pro. AITerm runs on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 13 or later. Cloud provider charges are separate.
Keep learning.
Prepared with AI assistance from the current AITerm documentation. The steps follow the handbook; this is not a recorded app demonstration.