Tools of the Trade: Adding fuzziness to the mix

In this Tool of the Trade, we take a quick look at how fuzziness with fzf can enhance your day-to-day life in the terminal. This is one of those tools that you did not know you really needed until you try it.

For this article, we'll focus purely on adding fuzziness with the official fzf shell integration so you can jump between cluster directories, open files, and search shell history without bespoke scripts.

Add fzf shell integration

To get the key bindings and completion from the official integration, install fzf and then enable the hooks:

Clone the repository locally:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/junegunn/fzf.git ~/.fzf

Run the installer to add key bindings and completion:

~/.fzf/install --key-bindings --completion --no-update-rc

Source the fzf bash helpers in your shell init:

echo 'source ~/.fzf.bash' >> ~/.bashrc

Add the fzf shell integration to your prompt environment:

cat <<'EOF' >> ~/.bashrc
# fzf
eval "$(fzf --bash)"
EOF

Reload your shell configuration:

source ~/.bashrc

With this enabled you get:

• Ctrl+T to fuzzy-find files and insert the result on the command line.
• Alt+C to fuzzy cd into directories (perfect for jumping between clusters).
• Ctrl+R to fuzzy-search shell history.

The 'Hello World' version of fzf should be just this one. Try navigating your shell history:

Quick fuzzy helpers for clusters

You can combine the shell integration with a small helper to jump into a cluster directory under ~/clusters:

clusters() {
  local target
  target=$(find "$HOME/clusters" -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d -printf '%f\n' | sort | fzf --prompt="cluster dir> ") || return
  cd "$HOME/clusters/$target"
}

Run clusters and pick with fzf; if you kept the direnv workflow from the earlier post, your variables will load automatically when you land in the directory. If you prefer a single KUBECONFIG, you can swap clusters for a context switcher like this:

And this is a DIY version of Ahmed's famous kubectx command:

kctx() {
  local ctx
  ctx=$(kubectl config get-contexts -o name | fzf --prompt="k8s context> ") || return
  kubectl config use-context "$ctx"
}

Change directories quickly

You can change directories quickly using ALT+c, check this out

Conclusion

In this post, we enabled fzf shell integration, added a couple of tiny helpers to jump between cluster directories or switch contexts, and tweaked PS1 to always show the active Kubernetes context. Pair this with the directory-per-cluster workflow from the earlier article and you get fast, low-friction navigation across all your clusters.