GitHub - akshaydeshraj/smartclip: Fix multi-line shell commands before they hit your terminal

Paste multi-line shell commands that actually work.

You copy a command from a README, Stack Overflow, or ChatGPT. You paste it. Your terminal chokes:

$ curl \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  https://api.example.com

zsh: command not found: -X
zsh: command not found: -H

smartclip hooks into your shell's paste and silently fixes it:

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" https://api.example.com

No daemon. No polling. No background process. ~100 lines of bash. It runs only when you paste.

Why not just fix your terminal?

You might be thinking "bracketed paste mode solves this" — it doesn't. Bracketed paste prevents line-by-line execution, but the content itself still arrives malformed: broken continuations, stray $ prompts, operators split across lines. That's a content problem, not a terminal problem.

Install

brew install akshaydeshraj/smartclip         # homebrew
npm install -g smartclip-cli                  # npm

Then add one line to your shell config:

# pick your shell — zsh / bash / fish
source "$(brew --prefix)/share/smartclip/integrations/smartclip.zsh"
source "$(brew --prefix)/share/smartclip/integrations/smartclip.bash"
source (brew --prefix)/share/smartclip/integrations/smartclip.fish

npm or source install paths

npm:

source "$(npm prefix -g)/lib/node_modules/smartclip-cli/integrations/smartclip.zsh"

From source:

git clone https://github.com/akshaydeshraj/smartclip.git ~/smartclip
cd ~/smartclip && ./install.sh
source ~/smartclip/integrations/smartclip.zsh

Restart your shell. That's it. Paste with Cmd+V as usual.

What it fixes

Pattern	Example
`\` continuations	`docker run \` `-p 8080:80 \` `nginx`
Pipe / `&&` / `\|\|` splits	`cat log \|` `grep error`
`$` / `>` prompts	`$ git add .` `$ git push`
Indented arguments	`sudo cat` `/very/long/path`
Separate commands	`cd /tmp` `git clone url`
Heredocs	Preserved as-is

What it won't touch: prose, JSON, YAML, URLs — anything that doesn't score high enough on the shell-command heuristic passes through unchanged.

How it works

paste → detect → fix → validate → insert

Detect — Score-based heuristic (known commands, operators, prompts, flags, redirections). Below threshold? Pass through unchanged.
Fix — State machine joins continuations, strips prompts, collapses commands.
Validate — bash -n syntax check. Invalid result? Original is pasted instead.

The shell integration overrides zsh's bracketed-paste widget (or bash/fish equivalent). Your normal Cmd+V triggers it — no new keybindings, no muscle memory change.

Manual use

smartclip fix                                # fix clipboard in-place
pbpaste | smartclip | pbcopy                 # pipe mode (macOS)
echo "$ git status" | smartclip              # stdin filter

Contributing

./test.sh                                    # run the test suite

PRs welcome. The entire tool is a single file: smartclip.

License

MIT