Bashou

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Learn Linux commands and bash scripting for free, in your own terminal.

A little pixel-art pet lives in the corner of your terminal. It grows while you learn the command line. Start with bash. Then pick what you want: Linux, systemd, packages, gpg and pass, SQL, CI/CD, Python, C or Rust. Run commands, try new tools, and collect new pets along the way.

Learn the terminal without asking an AI

Bashou teaches in your real terminal, while you work. It runs offline: no account, no AI model, no tokens spent to learn what a command does. It stays out of your way: one pet for all your terminals, and it never draws over your text.

• bashou learn <command> takes a command apart and explains every piece: the command, each option, the arguments, pipes and redirections (88 commands, from ls to tar, awk, gpg and kubectl). With no command, it explains the last one your pet suggested.
• Your pet gives tips as you go (Ctrl+R, cd -, du -sh *…) and notices the tools you haven't tried yet.
• 304 achievements reward real skills: a pipe of 3 commands, find -exec, sed -i, git bisect, tar -tf…
• Threats show up now and then. bashou fight opens a sandbox shell where you beat them with the right tool: grep against the Log Hydra, awk against the Ledger Golem. They start with the first steps (an option to find in --help, a typo to fix in your editor, files to tidy) and go up to Linux rights, services and git merge conflicts. A successful command with the right tool hits the enemy; other commands cost you a heart (looking around with ls, cat or find, or a typo, never does; in a fight where you fix a file, only a failed try with the tool does). Code fights hand you a small broken Python or C file to fix (a missing ;, a loop that never ends, a memory leak, a shell injection); script fights hand you a bash script built on a small template, with a habit that's fine at the prompt and a bug in a script (ls output in a loop, a name starting with -, local x=$(cmd), echo on data, a temp file left behind): your fix wins only when the script works again on Bashou's own tricky files; package fights ask your own machine with apt, dpkg or rpm, or have you fix a repository file; CI/CD fights hand you a GitHub Actions or GitLab CI file to fix (indentation, stages, a token in clear, needs: and if:, when: manual); SQL fights hand you an SQLite database to query and fix (SELECT, JOIN, CREATE TABLE, INSERT, UPDATE, INSERT … ON CONFLICT DO UPDATE). Secrets fights teach gpg and pass: lock and open a file, spot a forged download by its signature, take a password out of a script with $(pass show …). They bring their own practice key and store: yours are never touched. Network fights read your own addresses and routes with ip, find a listener with ss, compare getent and DNS, and read saved captures with tcpdump -r; their servers listen on 127.0.0.1 only, and nothing leaves your machine. Beaten fights come back after 1, 7 and 30 days (spaced repetition), so what you learned stays.
• bashou lesson: the Sage Owl's library. Lessons with drawings that grow page by page (the stack and the heap, where output goes, permissions, $( )…), on a path: each one opens once you've passed the ones before it, by winning a fight or earning an achievement, and prepares your next step. Your editor is yours to pick, nano or vi. In a fight, lesson opens the one that explains it.
• bashou project: you want to practise a language but don't know what to program? 13 real projects in Python, Shell, C and Rust, from very easy to hard: merge PDFs, sort your photos by date, a backup script, a Pomodoro timer, an internet outage logger… One small step at a time: each step says what to do and when it's done, never how, with a hint if you're stuck and a short explanation once it's done.
• bashou spot: a quick game. A string shows up: an IPv6 address, a MAC, a hash, base64, a JWT, a Linux password hash, a CSRF token, OAuth2, a date, a regex, a line of Python or SQL… Say what it is with the arrow keys, faster and faster, in 25 seconds; 5 mistakes end the game. The ones you'll meet in logs and configs, recognised at a glance.
• bashou arena: come and fight when you want. A timed fight (hearts and a clock), or a security investigation with no clock (a hidden file, a cron backdoor, a SUID binary). Lose, and the arena closes for an hour.
• bashou adventure: a walk through 13 topics (coding logic, bash at the prompt, bash scripts, Linux with systemd, Python, Rust, C, Debian, Rocky Linux, CI/CD, SQL, networks, AI tools) with 444 questions about what goes wrong and what to check first, bosses, and chests that open with real commands.

Discover pets

Choose a starter: Stardust, Seedling or Pebble. It grows up to level 20 and changes shape along the way. What it becomes is for you to find out.

32 more pets hide in your terminal. Each one comes from what it stands for: a Droplet after your first 10 commands (it keeps changing shape as you type), a night coder for your first programs, a mushroom for your own scripts, others for a new tool used often enough, a long pipe, a fight lost or won, a walk in the adventure, a landscape that grows with your projects, a chameleon for sharp eyes… The swap board shows only their silhouette until you meet them.

Show off your pet

Proud of how far you got? bashou share shows a QR code in your terminal. Scan it, and your phone draws a banner of your pet, its family and your progress (with your best bashou spot score and a row of your rare pets), with a button to send it on Signal, WhatsApp or anywhere you like. The first time, it asks for a nickname to show instead of your real name (bashou share --name Nova changes it).

Before the QR code, Bashou lists exactly what the card holds: no commands, files, machine names or dates. The progress travels inside the link, after the #, a part browsers never send to a server: the page draws the banner on your phone and keeps nothing.

Install

Bashou has its own signed repositories: install it once, and it updates with the rest of your system.

Debian, Ubuntu (apt):

sudo mkdir -p -m 755 /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSLo /etc/apt/keyrings/bashou.asc https://iamastealer.github.io/Bashou/bashou.asc
printf '%s\n' 'Types: deb' 'URIs: https://iamastealer.github.io/Bashou/deb/' 'Suites: ./' \
  'Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/bashou.asc' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bashou.sources
sudo apt update && sudo apt install bashou

Rocky, Alma, RHEL, Fedora (dnf):

sudo curl -fsSLo /etc/yum.repos.d/bashou.repo https://iamastealer.github.io/Bashou/bashou.repo
sudo dnf install bashou

Open a new terminal: your pet is there. Every user gets one, except root. bashou off hides it, in new terminals too. bashou on brings it back. No pet on Debian or Ubuntu? Run bashou on once: it adds one line to your ~/.bashrc (to your ~/.zshrc if you type it in zsh). Updates come with apt upgrade or dnf upgrade.

macOS, any other Linux, zsh only, or git to follow the code as it's written: see INSTALL.md.

What's new

0.11.0

• Your path in the library: the lessons to take next come first (f shows them all), and hard lessons wait until you master the ones before.
• systemd is part of Linux, and the Snail family is redrawn as a slug building its shell.

0.10.6

• Certificates: six lessons and ten fights, from reading a certificate to running your own CA and revoking one, and a new pet, the Seal, that grows with them.
• SQL lessons and questions corrected and checked statement by statement.

0.10.5

• Bash scripts are a skill of their own, with eight fights that run your fixed script on hostile files.

0.10.4

• Fled a fight? Your pet stops reminding you of it; the threat still waits for bashou fight until midnight.
• Gary has his real colors: yellow-green eyes with red pupils and a green belly.

0.10.3

• Threats wait all day: a fight now waits until midnight and your pet repeats its warning every half hour, so you don't miss it. Experienced players get up to 2 threats a day.
• Homebrew installs run on Homebrew's own Python 3.15.

Every change, release by release: CHANGELOG.md.

Play on two computers

bashou export writes your progress in a small text file, bashou-save-DATE.txt, in the folder you are in. Carry it to the other computer the way you like (a mail to yourself, an attachment, a chat), then run bashou import bashou-save-DATE.txt there, or bashou import alone and paste the text. Nothing is lost: for each thing, Bashou keeps the best of the two computers.

By default the file holds only your achievements, pets, lessons, fights and adventure: no command, no tool count, no date. bashou export --full carries everything, counters included. Both computers need the same version of Bashou.

Your data stays on your machine

Bashou collects nothing. No account, no telemetry, no analytics, no ads: you are not the product. It reads your commands only to count tools and constructs, keeps those counters in ~/.local/share/bashou, and never sends them anywhere. The only thing it asks the internet is whether a new version is out (once a day; bashou config updates off stops it, and apt or dnf installs leave it to your package manager).

Bashou is a small side project, made with spare AI tokens by someone who likes teaching and helping people. There is nothing to sell.

Use

bashou          # see how your pet is doing
bashou -h       # all commands
bashou here     # bring your pet to this terminal
bashou update   # get the new version (your pet tells you when there is one; apt or dnf for packages)

Uninstall

Installed as a package: sudo apt remove bashou or sudo dnf remove bashou, then remove the source /usr/share/bashou/bashou.bash line from ~/.bashrc (and the bashou.zsh one from ~/.zshrc).

Installed with git or Homebrew: see INSTALL.md.

Your progress stays in ~/.local/share/bashou (delete it too to forget everything).

More

The guide explains pets, achievements, fights and translations. Something broken, or an idea? Report a bug or suggest an idea. Want to help? Pixel art, lessons, security challenges and adventure questions are welcome: contributing. How it started: made with AI for responsible use (learning, so you can do it too); the Rust version is written by hand.

MIT license.