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Pobshell: A Bash-like shell for live Python objects

64 points · submitted Jun 2025 by u/cogitoe · Showcase · archived

What Pobshell Does

Think cd, ls, cat, and find — but for Python objects instead of files.

Stroll around your code, runtime state, and data structures. Inspect everything: modules, classes, live objects. Plus recursive search and CLI integration.

2 minute video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5QoSrc_E_A

What it's for:

  • Exploratory debugging: Inspect live object state on the fly
  • Understanding APIs: Examine code, docstrings, class trees
  • Shell integration: Pipe object state or code snippets to LLMs or OS tools
  • Code and data search: Recursive search for object state or source without file paths
  • REPL & paused script: Explore runtime environments dynamically
  • Teaching & demos: Make Python internals visible and walkable

Pobshell is pick‑up‑and‑play: familiar commands plus optional new tricks.

Target Audience

Python devs, Data Scientists, LLM engineers and intermediate Python learners.

Pobshell is open source, and in alpha release -- Don't use it in production. N.B. Tab-completion isn't available in Jupyter.

Tested on MacOs, Linux and Windows (Python 3.12)

Install: pip install pobshell

Github: https://github.com/pdalloz/pobshell

Alternatives

You can get similar information from a good IDE or JupyterLab, but you'd need to craft Python list comprehensions using the inspect module. IPython has powerful introspection commands too.

What makes Pobshell different is how expressive its commands are, with an easy learning curve - because basic commands and navigation are based on Bash - and tight integration with CLI tools.

Pobshell: A Bash-like shell for live Python objects

17 comments · 95% upvoted · other discussions

comments

Busy_Affect3963 7 points · Jun 2025

The cd and ls -l are nice ideas, but dir in Python already does most of what your ls does. Using / seems clunky compared to the normal . in Python.

Can you make the commands into Python functions (or something?) in a simple library that could be imported into the normal Python repl with a from pobshell import *

How's it work together with pdb too?

cogitoe [OP] 5 points · Jun 2025

The shell can be imported and used as you describe. Some of Pobshell's main strengths focus on interactive use.

But for sure there is also an option to create a persistent session object & run commands with it:

import pobshell pob_session = pobshell.pob() pob_session.onecmd_plus_hooks('ls -l') pob_session.onecmd_plus_hooks('quit')  NB you must end with the quit command (to avoid risk of memory leaks from saved frame objects)

cogitoe [OP] 2 points · Jun 2025

You can do similar with dir() and list comprehensions but it gets painful quickly. 

There's a reason most people prefer exploring/interacting with the filesystem with Posix shells to Python REPLs with list comprehensions -- I prefer Python for multi use code, but ls and cd etc are better for exploring and seeing what's going on.

When there's a lot less friction it can be a step change in usefulness.

Edit: Reworded a sentence for clarity

erez27 3 points · Jun 2025 · import inspect

Looks nice! I can imagine myself using this if it had a good debugging integration. i.e. I could call pobreakpoint() and then work using normal pdb commands as part of the shell

cogitoe [OP] 2 points · Jun 2025

Thanks! It doesn't have two-way integration with pdb, but it can be started from a pdb prompt:
(pdb) import pobshell; pobshell.shell()

cogitoe [OP] 2 points · Jun 2025

Any feedback is appreciated!

harryle_adelaide 3 points · Jun 2025

So this is a formatted dir function?

cogitoe [OP] 2 points · Jun 2025

Its also formatted inspect functions and "current object" idea from filesystem shells which means these commands act on all attributes or contents if not given an argument. (So very expressive)

Plus ability to pipe output to OS utils and LLMs. And recursive search.

Edit: "on attributes or contents" -> "on all attributes or contents"

phreakocious 2 points · Jun 2025

I usually drop a threaded REPL with command history and the rich module into my apps to act as simple CLI, but this is neat. Might incorporate it.

cogitoe [OP] 1 points · Jun 2025

Great! Let me know how it goes. Remember that its alpha release right now, you might find rough edges.

jdehesa 2 points · Jun 2025

Cool idea :) I wonder if you could integrate as an extension to IPython, in the form of "magic" commands or something.

cogitoe [OP] 2 points · Jun 2025

Thank you. I've been thinking about IPython/Jupyter too. One problem is no tab completion because of cmd2 reliance on readline.  

I have ideas for workarounds, but its too soon to spend time without knowing how many people end up using Pobshell.

fullouterjoin 2 points · Jun 2025

There is ipdb.

https://github.com/gotcha/ipdb 

import ipdb

# drop into an ipython like debugger
ipdb.set_trace()
cogitoe [OP] 1 points · Jun 2025

That's a good idea! I think Pobshell could invoke ipdb and manage the ipdb session by passing through ipdb/pdb commands.

Also, I've looked a bit more at IPython %magic, and it does seem to support bespoke tab completion. It would be some work to convert current tab completion code, but it looks possible.

Rize92 1 points · Jun 2025

Does this shell have any ‘grep’ like functionality? If it does, I could see myself using this a whole lot.

cogitoe [OP] 2 points · Jun 2025

Definitely it does. The find command gives recursive search, and can 'grep' lots of characteristics eg name, docstring, source code, str representation, inspect predicates ```

find foo --name bar find foo --doc "\bbar\b" -r find foo --cat defbar* find foo --str bar find foo --isclass Also any command can be applied to a subset of attributes/contents of current object using same syntax ls -l --str "\b42\b" -r And output of any command can be piped to your OS grep  ls -l  /foo/ | grep "bar" ```

Rize92 2 points · Jun 2025

Very nice! Thanks for the comprehensive answer too. I’ll be checking this out for sure! Thanks for contributing such a great tool to the eco system.