16 Jul 2026

histsync: sync shell history with pass

Atuin is super cool: it let's you sync shell history across machine, but few issues for me:

Requires a server. I distrust managed public servers and don't want to host my own.
Heavy LLM usage for development. I have nothing against LLMs but I try to avoid them.

I use password-store (pass), so why don't I leverage this:

bash = {
  enable = true;
  # ...
  initExtra = ''
    histsync() {
      # Append currently history to HISTFILE
      history -a

      # Entry name in pass - I separate history by host
      local passentry="ShellHistories/$HOSTNAME"

      # Merge HISTFILE and pass entries, remove duplicates, update HISTFILE
      (cat "$HISTFILE" 2>/dev/null; pass show "$passentry" 2>/dev/null) |
        awk '!a[$0]++' |
        ${pkgs.moreutils}/bin/sponge "$HISTFILE"

      # Update pass entry with the merged history
      <"$HISTFILE" pass insert -mf "$passentry"

      # Reload history for current session
      history -c
      history -r
    }

    # ...
  '';
};

Note: the merge logic will not work if you use timestamps.