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Command history

The Up-arrow history picker: session commands, shell history, and past prompts.

Press up-arrow at an empty prompt and Mel opens the HISTORY picker — a searchable overlay of everything you've run and everything you've asked, instead of blindly cycling one command at a time.

Opening and navigating

  • Up-arrow opens the picker anchored above the prompt, with the newest entry selected.
  • Up/down move through rows. Pressing down past the newest entry closes the picker and returns you to the input.
  • Enter (or a click) drops the chosen row into the input — it doesn't run it, so you can edit first.
  • shift+tab cycles the tabs; esc dismisses.

The same picker works inside agent conversations, so your history follows you between modes.

The three tabs

TabShows
AllCommands and prompts interleaved, oldest to newest
CommandsShell commands only
PromptsAgent prompts only

Each row shows a type glyph (a >_ for commands, a chat bubble for prompts), the text on one line, and a relative age on the right when the time is known.

The preview pane

On the Prompts tab, a preview pane opens under the list showing the full, multi-line text of the selected prompt — useful because agent prompts are often paragraphs, not one-liners. The preview scrolls independently.

Where entries come from

The picker merges several sources, deduplicated within each kind:

  • This session's commands — from the pane's block list, with real timestamps (up to 40).
  • Shell history — your ~/.zsh_history or ~/.bash_history (the most recent 50), so history from before Mel is right there. These predate Mel's timestamps, so they sort oldest and show no age.
  • This session's prompts plus prompts from recently saved conversations (the most recent 20) under ~/.local/share/mel/conversations/.

Everything sorts oldest → newest, so the most recent activity is always at the bottom next to your prompt.

History picker vs. ghost autocomplete

The picker is for browsing; the ghost autocomplete is for speed — as you type, Mel suggests the completion inline and → accepts it. They share the same underlying history sources.

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