Trimmy ✂️ - “Paste once, run once” — flattens multi-line shell snippets so they execute

"Paste once, run once." — Trimmy flattens those multi-line shell snippets you copy so they actually paste and run.

What it does

• Lives in your macOS menu bar (macOS 15+). No Dock icon.
• Watches the clipboard and, when it looks like a shell command, removes newlines (respects \ continuations) and rewrites the clipboard automatically.
• Strips leading shell prompts (#/$) when the line looks like a command, while leaving Markdown headings untouched.
• Aggressiveness levels (Low/Normal/High) to control how eagerly it detects commands:
  • Low: only flattens when it’s obviously a command. Example: a long kubectl ... | jq ... multi-line snippet.
  • Normal (default): balances caution and helpfulness. Example: a brew update \ && brew upgrade copy from a blog post.
  • High: flattens almost any multi-line text that could be a command. Example: a quick two-line ls + cd copied from chat.
• Optional "Keep blank lines" so scripts with intentional spacing stay readable.
• Optional "Remove box drawing chars (│┃)" to strip prompt-style gutters (any count, leading or trailing) and collapse the leftover whitespace.
• "Paste Trimmed" button + hotkey trims on-the-fly and pastes without permanently altering the clipboard (uses High aggressiveness); shows the target app (e.g., “Paste Trimmed to Ghostty”) and strikes out removed chars in the preview.
• "Paste Original" button + hotkey pastes the untouched copy even after auto-trim.
• Optional "Launch at login" toggle (macOS 13+ via SMAppService).
• Auto-update via Sparkle (Check for Updates… + auto-check toggle; feed from GitHub Releases).
• Uses a marker pasteboard type to avoid reprocessing its own writes; polls with a lightweight timer and a small grace delay to catch promised pasteboard data.
• Safety valve: skips auto-flatten if the copy is more than 10 lines (even on High) to avoid mangling big blobs.

Aggressiveness levels & examples

• Low (safer) — needs strong command cues (pipes, redirects, continuations).
  Before:

  ls -la \
    | grep '^d' \
    > dirs.txt
  

  After: ls -la | grep '^d' > dirs.txt
• Normal (default) — README/blog-ready: handles typical multi-line commands with flags.
  Before:

  kubectl get pods \
    -n kube-system \
    | jq '.items[].metadata.name'
  

  After: kubectl get pods -n kube-system | jq '.items[].metadata.name'
• High (eager) — flattens almost anything command-shaped, plus the manual “Paste Trimmed” hotkey always uses this level.
  Before:

  echo "hello"
  print status
  

  After: echo "hello" print status
• Prompt cleanup — copies that start with # or $ are de-promoted when they look like shell commands, e.g. # brew install foo → brew install foo; Markdown headings like # Release Notes remain untouched.

Quick start

Get the precompiled binary from Releases

1. Build: swift build -c release (Swift 6, macOS 15+).
2. Bundle: ./Scripts/package_app.sh release → Trimmy.app.
3. Launch: open Trimmy.app (or add to Login Items). Menu shows Auto-Trim toggle, Aggressiveness submenu, Keep blank lines toggle, Paste Trimmed/Paste Original actions, and a last-action status.

Headless trimming (CLI)

Use the bundled CLI to trim text without launching the UI:

swift run TrimmyCLI --trim /path/to/file --aggressiveness high --json

Pipe stdin:

pbpaste | swift run TrimmyCLI --trim - --force

Options:

• --force/-f forces High aggressiveness
• --aggressiveness {low|normal|high}
• --preserve-blank-lines / --no-preserve-blank-lines
• --remove-box-drawing / --keep-box-drawing
• --json emits {original, trimmed, transformed}
• Exit codes: 0 success, 1 no input/error, 2 no transformation, 3 JSON encode error

Lint / Format

• Format: swiftformat.
• Lint: swiftlint lint --fix or swiftlint lint.

Release checklist

• Update version strings and CHANGELOG.
• swiftformat / swiftlint
• swift test
• ./Scripts/package_app.sh release
• ./Scripts/sign-and-notarize.sh
• Verify: spctl -a -t exec -vv Trimmy.app; stapler validate Trimmy.app
• Upload release zip and tag

Notes

• Bundle ID: com.steipete.trimmy (LSUIElement menu-bar app).
• Polling: ~150ms with leeway; grace delay ~80ms to let promised data arrive.
• Clipboard writes tag themselves with com.steipete.trimmy to avoid loops.

Related

• 🟦🟩 CodexBar — Keep Codex token windows visible in your macOS menu bar.
• ✂️ Trimmy — “Paste once, run once.” Flatten multi-line shell snippets so they paste and run.
• 🧳 MCPorter — TypeScript toolkit + CLI for Model Context Protocol servers.
• 🧿 Oracle — Prompt bundler/CLI for GPT-5.1/Claude/Gemini with multi-model support.

License

MIT