pelorus

A file manager with opinions.

Dual-pane TUI file manager. Local filesystem, SFTP remotes, and Tailscale nodes, addressed identically. Archives behave as directories. Fuzzy filtering everywhere it fits. One static binary, no runtime dependencies, no configuration required to be useful on first launch.

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Demo

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Features

Dual pane

• Left and right panes, always visible — not a mode, not a toggle, just there
• tab to switch; C / F5 to copy across; M / F6 to move across
• < / > to resize the split on the fly
• Background job queue (J) with animated progress bars and speed/ETA — operations never block the UI
• Multi-select with space — mark items across directories, then copy/move/delete the whole set at once

Navigation

• j / k / h / l — you know what these do
• / starts fuzzy filter on the active pane — type to narrow, enter to open, esc to clear
• g opens the jump list — frecency-ranked, fuzzy-searchable, persistent
• B to pin the current directory; ~ to go home; ctrl+l to type a path directly (tab completes filenames)
• s cycles sort order per pane: name → size → date → extension
• m<key> sets a named mark on the current directory; '<key> jumps back to it instantly (session-scoped)
• ctrl+f opens a recursive file search overlay — backed by fd (or find as fallback), live fuzzy filtering as you type

Preview pane

• p toggles a third panel: syntax-highlighted code via Chroma, rendered Markdown via Glamour, file metadata for everything else
• Images render as a metadata card — format, dimensions, size, modified time, plus a procedurally-generated tile colored from the image's own pixels. Works over SFTP. Works on any terminal. No external binaries.
• Scrollable with ] / [; inline search with / (n/N to cycle matches)
• Loads asynchronously — the pane spinner tells you it's working

File operations

• o opens a file with the OS default application (open on macOS, xdg-open on Linux) — uses the system default, not Finder
• ! opens a command prompt in the footer; type a shell command and press Enter to run it against the selected file
• S drops into an interactive shell in the current directory; the UI resumes on exit
• Q opens macOS Quick Look on the selected file
• R opens $EDITOR with all selected filenames listed — edit the names, save, quit; renames are applied automatically
• F4 opens the selected file in your configured editor

Git awareness

• File-level status glyphs inline in the file list: M modified · A staged · D deleted · ? untracked
• Branch indicator (⎇ main) in the status bar when inside a git repo
• Non-blocking — fetched async with a 5 s cache; invisible outside git repos and on remote panes
• Previewing a modified or staged file shows its git diff instead of the file body — additions green, deletions red, hunk headers blue

Status bar

• Breadcrumb path with › separators, home-dir compressed to ~
• Centered git branch; remote pane badge (⇄ user@hostname) on the right; permissions + size far right
• Archive context shown inline: ~ › projects [archive.zip › src]
• Transient messages (copy confirmations, errors) override the bar full-width

Command palette

• ctrl+p or : — fuzzy-searches every action, built-in and custom
• Actions grouped by category: Navigation · File · View · App · Custom
• Shows keybindings inline

Archives as directories

• Press l on a .zip, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar.xz, or .tar — it opens as a directory
• Navigate in, copy files out; h at the root returns to the real filesystem

Remote connections

• c opens the connect palette — parses ~/.ssh/config automatically
• Tailscale nodes appear in a second section, fetched live from the local socket
• Connecting replaces the inactive pane with an SFTP session; all file operations work the same
• Remote panes display user@hostname:/path in steel blue — visually distinct from local panes at all times
• ctrl+d disconnects cleanly and reverts the pane to the local filesystem

Custom actions

• Any shell command is a first-class action
• {path}, {name}, {dir} template variables
• Appears in the command palette, inherits context filtering, bindable to any key

Theming

• Six built-in themes: haruspex (default — warm rust on ink), gruvbox, nord, dracula, catppuccin, light
• Panes are foreground-only — the terminal's own background shows through, so themes compose with whatever terminal palette you're already running. Match a dark theme to a dark terminal, light to light
• Omarchy palettes auto-detected: if ~/.config/omarchy/current/theme is set, pelorus uses its colors and picks matching chroma/glamour styles by luminance
• --theme / -t flag to set at launch; or set in config

File icons

• Pure-Unicode glyph set by default — geometric BMP characters, single-cell width, no font dependency, works on any terminal
• Set icons = "nerd" under [theme] in config to opt into Nerd Font devicons (per-language glyphs, requires a Nerd Font installed)
• Filename-aware (Dockerfile, Makefile, LICENSE, lock files, manifests) and mode-bit-aware (executables without an extension get the exec glyph)

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Installation

go install

go install github.com/mogglemoss/pelorus@latest

From source

git clone https://github.com/mogglemoss/pelorus
cd pelorus
go build -o pelorus .
./pelorus

No CGO. No runtime dependencies. One binary.

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Usage

pelorus [path] [flags]

  path              Directory to open (default: current directory)

  -f, --config      Config file path (default: XDG config dir)
  -t, --theme       Theme name: haruspex · gruvbox · nord · dracula · catppuccin · light · omarchy
      --demo        Start with a sandboxed demo filesystem (for recordings/screenshots)
      --version     Print version and exit

On first run, pelorus writes a fully-commented config file to the XDG config directory (~/.config/pelorus/config.toml on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/pelorus/config.toml on macOS). Every option is present and explained. Reading it is optional.

Set start_dir = "last" in config to always reopen where you left off.

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Key Bindings

Navigation

Key	Action
j / ↓	Move down
k / ↑	Move up
h / ←	Go to parent
l / → / enter	Enter directory / open file / open archive
tab	Switch active pane
g	Jump list
~	Go to home directory
ctrl+l	Go to path (type any path)
s	Cycle sort: name → size → date → ext
/	Fuzzy-filter the active pane
ctrl+f	Recursive file search
m<key>	Set mark on current directory
'<key>	Jump to mark

File Operations

Key	Action
space	Toggle selection (multi-select)
C / F5	Copy selected (or all marked) to other pane
M / F6	Move selected (or all marked) to other pane
F8 / delete	Move to trash (OS trash on macOS/Linux)
d / ⇧F8	Permanent delete
r	Rename
R	Bulk rename in editor
n / ⇧F7	New file
N / F7	New directory
F4	Open in editor
o	Open with default application
Q	Quick Look (macOS)
!	Run shell command on selected file
y	Copy full path to clipboard
Y	Copy filename to clipboard
ctrl+r	Reveal in Finder (macOS)

View

Key	Action
p	Toggle preview pane
] / [	Scroll preview down / up
ctrl+/ or z/	Search within preview (opens preview pane if needed)
.	Toggle hidden files
J	Job queue
< / >	Shrink / grow left pane

App

Key	Action
ctrl+p / :	Command palette
c	Connect to SSH / Tailscale host
ctrl+d	Disconnect remote pane, revert to local
S	Drop into shell in current directory
B	Bookmark current directory
?	Keybinding reference
q	Quit

All keybindings are overridable in config.

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Custom Actions

[[actions.custom]]
id = "custom.open-zed"
name = "Open in Zed"
description = "Open selected file in Zed editor"
category = "Custom"
command = "zed {path}"
context = "always"

Template variables: {path} full path, {name} filename, {dir} containing directory. Commands run via sh -c. Custom actions appear in the palette and can be bound to any key.

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Technical Specifications

Parameter	Value
UI framework	Bubbletea
Styling	Lipgloss
Syntax highlighting	Chroma
Markdown rendering	Glamour
Image preview	Metadata card · image/* stdlib decoders + golang.org/x/image · sampled-pixel accent color
Fuzzy matching	sahilm/fuzzy — in-process, no fzf binary
SFTP	pkg/sftp + x/crypto/ssh
Tailscale	tailscale.com/client/tailscale local socket
Config	TOML via BurntSushi/toml
Archive formats	.zip · .tar · .tar.gz · .tar.bz2 · .tar.xz — pure Go
Jump list	Frecency scoring · XDG data dir · JSON
Clipboard	atotto/clipboard — CGO-free
File search	fd preferred, find fallback — no Go dependency
CGO	Disabled. One static binary.
Platforms	macOS · Linux (Tier 1) · Windows (Tier 2)

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Acknowledgments

Pelorus steals thoughtfully from:

Source	What we took
Marta	Action palette as spine, dual pane as default, archive-as-directory, job queue
ranger	Shell integration (S), run-command (!), marks (m/')
lf	Async IO pattern, nav/eval/ui separation
yazi	Fuzzy-everywhere as interaction model, preview depth
zoxide	Auto-ranked jump list

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License

MIT. See LICENSE.