helpv

A terminal-based help documentation viewer with subcommand navigation. I built this because reading --help output in a raw terminal is painful—no search, no navigation, no way to drill into subcommands without running another command.

The Problem

CLI tools have gotten complex. git has 150+ subcommands. kubectl has nested subcommands three levels deep. The standard workflow—run git --help, scroll with terminal history, run git remote --help, repeat—breaks down at scale. You lose context, you lose your place, you're constantly switching between reading and typing.

The Solution

helpv gives you a TUI pager with:

• Vim-style navigation (j/k, gg/G, Ctrl-d/u) for moving through help text
• Live search with match highlighting (/, n/N)
• Fuzzy subcommand finder (f) using nucleo for instant filtering
• Drill-down navigation into subcommands with breadcrumb tracking
• Command switching (o) to jump between different tools without exiting

Installation

From crates.io:

cargo install helpv

From source:

git clone https://github.com/trentdavies/helpv
cd helpv
cargo install --path .

Usage

helpv git              # View git help
helpv kubectl get      # View kubectl get help
helpv cargo build      # View cargo build help

Once inside:

How It Works

helpv fetches help text by trying strategies in order:

1. {command} --help
2. {command} -h
3. {base} help {subcommand} (for git-style CLIs)
4. man {command} (with formatting stripped)

The parser extracts subcommands by detecting section headers (e.g., "Commands:", "Subcommands:") and parsing indented entries beneath them. This is more art than science—CLI help formats vary wildly—but the default patterns handle most common tools.

Built-in Tool Packs

helpv ships with optimized help-fetching strategies for 25+ popular CLI tools. These handle quirks like aws putting help at the end (aws s3 help) or git preferring git help <cmd>.

No configuration needed—these work out of the box. User config overrides built-ins if you need custom behavior.

Configuration

Config lives at ~/.config/helpv/config.toml. Optional—sensible defaults work out of the box.

# Override help-fetching strategy for specific tools
[tools.kubectl]
help_flags = ["{cmd} --help", "kubectl help {cmd}"]

[tools.npm]
help_flags = ["{cmd} --help", "{cmd} -h"]

# Custom subcommand detection patterns
[[subcommand_patterns]]
section = "(?i)commands?:|subcommands?:"
entry = "^\\s{2,4}([\\w-]+)\\s+(.*)$"

# Keybinding overrides
[keys]
quit = ["q", "Escape"]
search = ["/"]
find_subcommand = ["f"]
open_command = ["o"]
back = ["Backspace"]

Limitations

• Subcommand parsing relies on heuristics. Tools with non-standard help formats may not parse correctly—use custom patterns in config as a workaround.
• Man page stripping handles basic formatting but may miss edge cases.
• Command history persists only within a session (i.e., not written to disk).