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# `shell-sieve`

### An MCP server and CLI wrapper that executes shell commands and intelligently compresses, filters, and extracts errors from verbose output to save AI agent context windows.

![License](https://img.shields.io/badge/license-MIT-blue.svg) ![Language](https://img.shields.io/badge/language-python-green.svg) ![Status](https://img.shields.io/badge/status-active-success.svg) [![PyPI version](https://img.shields.io/badge/pypi-v0.1.0-blue.svg)](https://pypi.org/project/shell-sieve/) [![License: MIT](https://img.shields.io/badge/License-MIT-yellow.svg)](https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT) [![MCP Server](https://img.shields.io/badge/MCP-Server-purple.svg)](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/)

<img src="demo.gif" alt="Demo" width="700" />

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## 🎯 Why?

AI coding agents frequently exhaust their context windows when running verbose commands like `npm install` or `pytest`, leading to hallucinations or dropped errors. Existing tools either blindly truncate output (losing the stack trace) or dump everything; Shell Sieve intelligently strips ANSI, collapses repetitive progress lines, and guarantees error extraction.

**Target audience:** AI agent developers, users of Claude Code/Cursor/Cline, and CLI power users who want clean, actionable command output without the noise.

## ✨ Features

- ✨ **ANSI stripping and smart line collapsing (e.g., progress bars)**
- ✨ **Error-aware truncation (always keeps the last N lines and any detected stack traces/errors)**
- ✨ **Native MCP Server implementation for seamless integration with Cursor, Claude Desktop, and Cline**

## 🚀 Quick Start

```bash
# Install
pip install shell-sieve

# Run
shell-sieve --help
```

## 📦 Installation

### From Source

```bash
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/shell-sieve.git
cd shell-sieve
```

```bash
# Create virtual environment
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate

# Install in development mode
pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Run tests
pytest -v
```

## 🎬 Demo

The GIF above was recorded using [Charm VHS](https://github.com/charmbracelet/vhs):

```bash
vhs < demo.tape
```

## 📖 Usage

```bash
# Show help
shell-sieve --help

# Common usage examples
shell-sieve --example
```

## 🏗️ Architecture

```mermaid
graph LR
    A[Input] --> B[Core Engine]
    B --> C[Output]
    B --> D[Plugins]
    D --> E[Extensions]
```

## 🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please:

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a feature branch (`git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature`)
3. Commit your changes (`git commit -m 'Add amazing feature'`)
4. Push to the branch (`git push origin feature/amazing-feature`)
5. Open a Pull Request

## 📄 License

MIT © 2026 — See [LICENSE](LICENSE) for details.

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