cheat allows you to create and view interactive cheatsheets on the command-line. It was designed to help remind *nix system administrators of options for commands that they use frequently, but not frequently enough to remember.
13k-star Go CLI with perfect health and near-perfect docs; only gap is no Limitations section
cheat is a Go CLI tool for creating, editing, and viewing personal and community cheatsheets directly in the terminal, with tagging, regex search, and syntax highlighting.| Rating | Summary | |
|---|---|---|
| Quality | excellent (23/24) | Exceptionally healthy, well-documented Go CLI; near-perfect across all three dimensions |
| PAI Relevance | integrate (0.50) | Subprocess-callable local reference lookup fills a gap PAI's Knowledge skill doesn't cover; composite sits exactly at threshold |
Composite lands at exactly 0.50 — formula verdict is INTEGRATE and stands; no override needed.
23/24 — actively-maintained / well-documented / high-discipline
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conf.yml cheatpaths YAML configuration example constitutes a config referenceFailed:
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go test ./...| Dimension | Score | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Harvest Value | 1 | The multi-directory cheatpath architecture with per-path tags and readonly flags mirrors PAI's tiered memory layout (WORK/, LEARNING/, KNOWLEDGE/) and is worth studying as a design pattern for the Knowledge skill. |
| Integration Readiness | 1 | Go binary, not TypeScript, but produces clean text output via cheat <command> subprocess; wrappable in a PAI skill with a thin shell adapter — no framework dependency. |
| Overlap Risk | 1 | Partial overlap with PAI's Knowledge skill (persistent knowledge graph), but Knowledge targets structured graph traversal rather than fast local command-reference lookup. |
| Gap Fill | 1 | PAI has no dedicated cheatsheet or command-reference lookup capability; Research and Knowledge skills serve different retrieval patterns than instant local reference for CLI syntax. |
Composite: 0.50
fab CLI workflow: Install cheat (go install github.com/cheat/cheat/cmd/cheat@latest) and create a personal cheatsheet at ~/.config/cheat/cheatsheets/personal/fabric documenting exact flags and invocation patterns for the 15 most-recommended Fabric patterns — after this, cheat fabric surfaces pattern-specific usage inline, so fab's recommendation output and the usage reference live in the same terminal session with no browser context switch.
Capture-to-Knowledge Pipeline: Create a cheatsheet at ~/.config/cheat/cheatsheets/personal/capture-pipeline encoding the manual validation steps, Haiku clean-room prompt templates, and stage-transition rules currently living only in design docs — this converts in-flight pipeline documentation into a single cheat capture-pipeline call, making the procedural memory queryable during active pipeline runs without opening a separate file or editor pane.
System-wide CLI reference: Run cheat --init to generate a config, then point a second cheatpath at a shared ~/Dotfiles/cheatsheets/ directory tracked in version control — any shell alias, custom script flag, or project-specific incantation documented there becomes searchable via cheat -s <keyword> across all machines, replacing the current scattered approach of grepping ~/.zshrc or .bash_aliases to recover half-remembered syntax.
Category: Developer Tools & CLIs
In this category: casey--just, mvanhorn--cli-printing-press, simonw--showboat, openclaw--gogcli, ohmyzsh--ohmyzsh, tirth8205--code-review-graph, tw93--Mole, gastownhall--beads, mvanhorn--printing-press-library, mattpocock--skills
Standing: Highest standalone score in the category at 23/24, edging out casey--just and mvanhorn--cli-printing-press (both 21/24); closest functional relative in the landscape is tldr-pages--tldr (Education & Reference, 18/24), which takes the community-curated read-only approach versus cheat's personal-editable, multi-path, locally searchable model.
Density: 9/10 — Full README (8KB), repo metadata (stars, forks, dates, license, topics, language, release history), and CI badge all available. Dependency manifest (go.mod contents) not provided by scraper; Go source files and test suite not directly inspected.
cheat predates tldr-pages by several years and is the originator of the CLI cheatsheet category. The two tools are complementary: tldr provides crowd-sourced simplified examples; cheat provides personal, editable, locally-searchable reference sheets with YAML frontmatter, multi-path support, and regex search. A PAI skill invoking both as subprocesses would cover community quick-reference and personal annotated reference in a single interface. The .cheat directory-scoped cheatpath feature (analogous to .git) is a particularly elegant pattern for project-local context that PAI's per-project skill directories could emulate.