# Terminal Commands That Spark Joy

There is something deeply satisfying about a well-crafted terminal command. Here are some I reach for daily.

```

ctrl + r

```

Reverse search through your command history. If you are typing the same commands over and over, you are doing it wrong.

```

!!

```

Runs your last command. Pair it with sudo when you forget you are not root: `sudo !!`

```

cd -

```

Jump back to your previous directory. Simple but underrated.

```

command | tee output.log

```

See output in terminal AND save it to a file. Debugging distributed systems without this is pain.

```

watch -n 1 kubectl get pods

```

Refresh a command every second. Great for watching deployments roll out or waiting for pods to die gracefully.

```

curl -s url | jq '.'

```

Pretty print JSON responses. The `-s` silences the progress bar noise.

```

history | awk '{print $2}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -10

```

See your most used commands. Mine is embarrassingly just `git status` and `ls`.

The terminal is not about memorizing commands. It is about building muscle memory for the ones that matter to your workflow.

Now go alias something.