Created By Peter Azmy
starcommand launches a different rocket every time you open a shell — a bash, zsh, PowerShell, and fish greeting that turns every new terminal into a unique generative artifact. Each rocket's colors, stars, and flame are mathematically linked — change the palette, and the entire constellation changes with it.
A lot.
- ~2 × 10⁴³ unique rockets possible — every palette deterministically reproducible from its six hex codes
- 148 candidate star cells around the rocket
- 18 stars per rocket, deterministically placed from the palette's bytes
- 8 flame patterns, mapped from the first palette byte
- 28-color neon mode that re-rolls every star color independently
- 6 color roles (porthole, window, body, top, window-sides, flame), each drawn from a full 24-bit color space
Every shell you open rolls a fresh palette from a high-entropy seed, so two identical rockets appearing twice in a lifetime is statistically impossible. Every tab is — visually — the first time anyone has ever seen that exact rocket.
But the kicker: it's all reproducible. Save a palette to favorites and you've saved the entire visual identity. Same six hex codes always produce the same 18 stars in the same 18 positions with the same flame. The palette is the spec.
Every row is a rocket that actually rolled up in a normal week of opening tabs. Each palette deterministic from its six hex codes.
star help displays the current value of every setting inline, in bold italics, so you can see the active state at a glance.
star |
Save the current palette to favorites |
star list |
Show all favorites |
star remove N |
Delete favorite #N |
star history |
Last 20 palettes (most recent first) |
star history N |
Save palette #N from history to favorites |
star show H1..H6 |
Preview a custom palette as a mini rocket |
star add H1..H6 |
Add a custom palette to favorites |
star explore [N] |
Browse N random palettes (default 5) |
star show previews any 6 hex codes as a full rocket before saving — useful for vibe-checking a palette you found.
With per-launch randomization, star history is the easiest way to rescue a rocket you liked: it appeared a few tabs ago, scroll back, find its number, save it.
star color |
Show current palette + rocket preview |
star color theme <dark|light> |
Match your terminal background |
star color random <white|neon> |
Star color on random rockets |
star color favorite <gold|neon> |
Star color on favorite rockets |
star color reset |
Restore defaults |
star weight <0-100> |
Ratio of favorites to random rockets (default 20) |
Light-mode terminal? Run this once so stars stay readable:
star color theme lightstarcommand uses a portable xorshift32 PRNG, implemented identically in bash, zsh, PowerShell, and fish. The seeding is independent per launch (every new shell rolls its own seed from /dev/urandom, or Get-Random on Windows), so each tab gets a fresh rocket — but if you feed the same seed to any of the four implementations, you get byte-identical output.
That matters because the palette is the spec. Save a palette to favorites in bash, sync rocket_favorites.txt to another machine running PowerShell, and that same six-hex-code line produces the same 18 stars in the same 18 positions with the same flame. Favorites are portable across every supported shell.
Verified by tests/parity_test.sh, which runs all four shells against a fixed reference fixture and confirms zero bytes of difference.
Requires bash ≥ 3.2 (macOS default), zsh ≥ 5.0, PowerShell ≥ 5.1, or fish ≥ 3.0.
bash:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/clefspear/starcommand/main/bash/install.sh | bashOpen a new tab. Done.
* macOS note: the installer writes to both
~/.bashrcand~/.bash_profileso login shells pick it up.
zsh:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/clefspear/starcommand/main/zsh/zsh_greeting.zsh | zshOpen a new tab. Done.
fish:
mkdir -p ~/.config/fish/functions
curl -fSL -o ~/.config/fish/functions/fish_greeting.fish \
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/clefspear/starcommand/main/fish/fish_greeting.fishOpen a new tab. Done.
PowerShell:
iwr -useb https://raw.githubusercontent.com/clefspear/starcommand/main/powershell/install.ps1 | iexOpen a new tab. Done.
Windows users: if you hit "running scripts is disabled on this system", run this once and then re-run the installer:
Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
The -fSL flags on curl matter: -f makes curl fail on HTTP errors instead of writing the error body to disk, -S shows the error message, and -L follows redirects. Without -f, a typo'd URL silently saves "404: Not Found" as your shell greeting and you'll see command not found: 404: on every new tab until you fix it.
Gold (default for favorites) — when a saved favorite rolls up, the star field renders in bright Mario-star yellow.
White — every star renders in plain terminal white. Clean, minimal, no frills.
Neon — every star independently rolls from a 28-color palette spanning the full hue wheel at 15° increments. Maximum chromatic chaos.
Use neon on favorites to make them pop, or on random rolls to make every shell feel like a party.
Palette → rocket (the visual layer):
Each palette hex code splits into 3 bytes (R, G, B), giving 18 bytes per rocket. Those bytes index into a precomputed list of 148 candidate cells around the rocket. Each byte contributes two stars (byte % 148 and (byte + 73) % 148, deduplicated). The flame is simpler: bytes[0] % 8 picks from 8 ASCII patterns. Reproducible from the palette alone — same six hex codes, same constellation, every time.
Seed → palette (the cross-shell layer):
A xorshift32 PRNG, implemented identically across all four shells, generates the palette from a seed. The PRNG state is a single 32-bit unsigned integer, advanced with the standard x ^= x << 13; x ^= x >> 17; x ^= x << 5 step, with & 0xFFFFFFFF masking on shells that use signed 64-bit integers (bash, zsh). HSL-to-hex color conversion uses awk on Unix shells and PowerShell's native math, both producing identical hex output.
Seed sourcing:
Every shell launch reads a fresh 32-bit unsigned integer from /dev/urandom on bash, zsh, and fish, and from Get-Random on PowerShell. Zero is rejected (xorshift32 sticks at zero) and re-rolled. This means every tab is a new rocket, but if you explicitly pass the same seed to any of the four implementations, you get byte-identical output — which is what makes favorites portable across shells.
Verified by tests/parity_test.sh and tests/prng_reference.txt — every shell reproduces the reference fixture exactly when given the same seed, and the end-to-end test confirms byte-identical output across bash, zsh, PowerShell, and fish.
~/.config/bash/
├── starcommand.sh # the theme (bash)
├── rocket_favorites.txt # saved palettes (plain text)*
├── rocket_history.txt # last 100 launches*
└── rocket_settings.sh # theme, modes, weight
~/.config/zsh/
├── zsh_greeting.zsh # the theme (zsh)
├── rocket_favorites.txt # saved palettes (plain text)*
├── rocket_history.txt # last 100 launches*
└── rocket_settings.zsh # theme, modes, weight
~/.config/fish/
├── functions/fish_greeting.fish # the theme (fish)
├── rocket_favorites.txt # saved palettes (plain text)*
├── rocket_history.txt # last 100 launches*
└── rocket_settings.fish # theme, modes, weight
# PowerShell (Windows / macOS / Linux)
<profile_dir>/Scripts/starcommand/
└── starcommand.ps1 # the theme (PowerShell)
<profile_dir>/
├── rocket_favorites.txt # saved palettes (plain text)*
├── rocket_history.txt # last 100 launches*
└── rocket_settings.ps1 # theme, modes, weight
# <profile_dir> is the directory of $PROFILE.CurrentUserAllHosts:
# Windows PS 7+ → %USERPROFILE%\Documents\PowerShell
# Windows PS 5.1 → %USERPROFILE%\Documents\WindowsPowerShell
# macOS / Linux → ~/.config/powershell
*Shareable between shells — same format. Same palette in bash_favorites
and powershell_favorites produces the same rocket on launch.
Plain text. Easy to back up, sync via dotfiles, or share.
Each block removes the source line from your shell's run command file and deletes the installed scripts, favorites, history, and settings.
*bash:
for f in ~/.bashrc ~/.bash_profile; do
[ -f "$f" ] && sed -i '/starcommand.sh/d; /# >>> starcommand >>>/,/# <<< starcommand <<</d' "$f"
done
rm -f ~/.config/bash/starcommand.sh ~/.config/bash/rocket_favorites.txt ~/.config/bash/rocket_history.txt ~/.config/bash/rocket_settings.sh*zsh:
sed -i '/zsh_greeting.zsh/d; /# >>> starcommand >>>/,/# <<< starcommand <<</d' ~/.zshrc
rm -f ~/.config/zsh/zsh_greeting.zsh ~/.config/zsh/rocket_favorites.txt ~/.config/zsh/rocket_history.txt ~/.config/zsh/rocket_settings.zsh* macOS note: the
sed -isyntax above is GNU sed (Linux, WSL, Git Bash). On macOS (BSD sed), add an empty string after-i:sed -i '' '/pattern/d' file.
fish:
rm -f ~/.config/fish/functions/fish_greeting.fish ~/.config/fish/rocket_favorites.txt ~/.config/fish/rocket_history.txt ~/.config/fish/rocket_settings.fishPowerShell:
$profilePath = $PROFILE.CurrentUserAllHosts
if (Test-Path $profilePath) {
$content = Get-Content $profilePath -Raw
$cleaned = [regex]::Replace($content, "(?s)\r?\n?# >>> starcommand >>>.*?# <<< starcommand <<<\r?\n?", '')
Set-Content -Path $profilePath -Value $cleaned.TrimEnd()
}
$profileDir = Split-Path $PROFILE.CurrentUserAllHosts -Parent
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force (Join-Path $profileDir 'Scripts/starcommand') -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Remove-Item -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -Path @(
(Join-Path $profileDir 'rocket_favorites.txt'),
(Join-Path $profileDir 'rocket_history.txt'),
(Join-Path $profileDir 'rocket_settings.ps1')
)Rocket ASCII art adapted from the fishbone theme by @maxnordlund.
Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE.