ExplainShell, Shell Command Explainer

Paste any shell command or one-liner and get a plain-English breakdown of every flag, argument, and pipe stage. Powered by explainshell.com, which maps commands to their man-page descriptions.

No API key required. Works immediately for any user.

When to Use

• User pastes a cryptic command and asks "what does this do?"
• Reviewing an unfamiliar bash script or automation pipeline
• Learning: user wants to understand each part of a complex one-liner
• Documentation: need to annotate shell commands in runbooks
• User asks "explain this command", "what does this flag mean?", "break this down"

How to Use

Explain a single command (browser link)

# The simplest approach, open the explanation in the browser
$command = "tar -xzf archive.tar.gz -C /tmp"
$encoded = [Uri]::EscapeDataString($command)
Start-Process "https://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=$encoded"
Write-Host "Opened: https://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=$encoded"

Fetch explanation text directly (PowerShell)

$command = "find . -type f -name '*.log' -mtime +7 -exec rm {} \;"
$encoded = [Uri]::EscapeDataString($command)
$url     = "https://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=$encoded"

$html    = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $url -UseBasicParsing
# Extract helptext spans (plain text explanations)
$pattern = '<span class="helptext">(.*?)</span>'
$matches = [regex]::Matches($html.Content, $pattern, 'Singleline')

Write-Host "Command: $command"
Write-Host ""
$matches | ForEach-Object {
    $text = $_.Groups[1].Value -replace '<[^>]+>', '' -replace '&amp;', '&' -replace '&lt;', '<' -replace '&gt;', '>'
    if ($text.Trim()) { Write-Host "  • $($text.Trim())" }
}
Write-Host ""
Write-Host "Full explanation: $url"

Explain a piped one-liner