demo.mp4

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Melon wraps your shell in a PTY and intercepts Tab to show a floating completion popup with commands, descriptions, and fuzzy matching — no per-shell plugin required.

Installation

Prerequisites: Rust 1.70+ (install rustup)

cargo install --git https://github.com/mrpbennett/melon

This builds melon and places it in ~/.cargo/bin/melon. Make sure ~/.cargo/bin is in your $PATH.

To update to the latest version, run the same command again.

Usage

Launch melon from any terminal:

melon --install

This will populate the following:

# Add this to your shell rc file (~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc):
# It wraps your shell in melon for autocomplete support.

if [ -z "$MELON" ] && [ -t 0 ] && [ -t 1 ]; then
  exec /Users/paul/.cargo/bin/melon
fi

Everything should work as normal — the only difference is that pressing Tab opens a fuzzy completion popup instead of running the shell's built-in completion.

Popup controls

Key	Action
Tab / ↓	Next item
Ctrl+j	Next item
Shift+Tab / ↑	Previous item
Ctrl+k	Previous item
Enter	Accept selection
Esc / Ctrl+C	Dismiss popup

Custom specs

Melon ships with 36 built-in completion specs (git, docker, cargo, npm, kubectl, claude, and more). You can add your own or override builtins by dropping JSON files into:

~/.local/share/melon/specs/

No rebuild required — specs are loaded at startup.

Specs follow the Fig autocomplete format:

{
  "name": "mytool",
  "description": "My custom tool",
  "subcommands": [{ "name": "run", "description": "Run the thing" }],
  "options": [{ "name": ["--verbose", "-v"], "description": "Verbose output" }]
}

Configuration

Optional config file at ~/.config/melon/config.toml:

max_visible = 8          # Max items shown in the popup (default: 8)
specs_dir = "~/.local/share/melon/specs"  # Custom specs directory

Building from source

git clone https://github.com/mrpbennett/melon
cd melon
cargo build --release
./target/release/melon

Debugging

melon --debug
# Logs written to ~/.local/share/melon/melon.log

Platform

macOS and Linux. Requires a Unix PTY — not compatible with Windows.

Inspiration

• https://github.com/StanMarek/ghost-complete