the-book-of-secret-knowledge: one README, fifteen chapters, links that age out

Four top-level entries, and all of it is inside one README

The repository has four top-level entries: .github/, LICENSE.md, README.md, and static/. Every chapter, every link, and every one-liner lives inside that single README.md, and there is no manifest, no package, and no build step anywhere at the top level. Repository metadata records no primary language at all, which is the honest signal: this is a document, not a program. Fifteen main chapters sit under a table of contents that is explicitly limited to main chapters, running from CLI Tools and GUI Tools through Networks and Containers/Orchestration to Manuals/Howtos/Tutorials, Inspiring Lists, Blogs/Podcasts/Videos, Hacking/Penetration Testing, and Other Cheat Sheets before the three shell chapters. Consequence for a reader: there is nothing to install and nothing to import, and the whole collection arrives as one long scroll rather than as pages you can address individually. Forking it is the only integration on offer.

The asterisk marks a dead link the author keeps on purpose

Link rot is a documented state here rather than an accident. The convention is that a URL marked with an asterisk is temporarily unavailable, and contributors are asked not to delete it without first confirming that it has permanently expired. That is an unusual and genuinely useful convention, because it turns a broken link from an oversight into a status, and it hands the decision back to a human being instead of a nightly checker. The cost is that a reader cannot see the marker without reading the line it sits on, and the marker is plain text rather than anything a script could act on. The convention also has no equivalent for tools that still resolve but have changed hands, moved to a paid licence, or turned their homepage into a marketing page. Consequence: when you follow an entry and land on a parked domain or a squatted one-liner page, the list gives you no way to know whether the link broke last month or two years ago. Treat every URL as needing a click, and treat the asterisk as a hint that somebody already suspected a problem with that one.

Sort order in lists is still an unchecked box

The to-do section is the clearest statement of what is unfinished, and it holds four items: add new stuff, add useful shell functions, add one-liners for collection tools, and sort order in lists. That last entry governs how you find anything at all. With sorting unfinished, the order inside a chapter is not guaranteed, so a reader cannot assume alphabetical grouping, recency grouping, or grouping by how often a tool comes up, and the only dependable method is to scan the text or search inside the file. A simple table of contents is offered as the fix, and the file itself wonders whether it is worth extending. Consequence: a reader who already knows the name of a tool still has to locate it, and a reader who does not know the name has no way to guess what is in there before opening it. The file also notes that new items are added on a regular basis, which is a claim about growth rather than about order, and two of the four boxes concern exactly the copyable material people come for.

One timestamp dates the entire collection at once

Timestamps matter in this repository more than in most, because the product is a set of URLs rather than an artifact. The last push landed on 2024-11-19, the repository is not archived, and it publishes no GitHub releases, so there is no tagged version to record when you cite it and no earlier version to fall back on when a link breaks. For a link collection the last push date is only the last time the repository changed, not a date on which any link was checked, and no individual entry shown carries a last-checked stamp of its own, so an entry added three years ago and one added last month look identical on the page. The README points at the GitHub RSS/Atom feed of commits for anyone who wants to keep informed about changes, but a commit notification tells you that something changed, not which tool stopped resolving. The default branch is master rather than main, which is the other detail worth knowing if you script against the raw file. Consequence: before you put any link from here into a runbook, a script, or an onboarding document, open it yourself and note the date you checked it.

For everyone, really, then narrowed to four job titles

The audience statement is generous on the surface and specific underneath. The file says for everyone, really, that everyone can find their favourite tastes, and then immediately narrows the claim, stating it is aimed towards System and Network administrators, DevOps, Pentesters, and Security Researchers. The chapters match the narrower version. Under CLI Tools the shells include GNU Bash, Zsh, and tclsh, alongside the frameworks bash-it, Oh My ZSH, Oh My Fish, and the prompt projects Starship and powerlevel10k. Shell plugins there cover z, fzf, zsh-autosuggestions, and zsh-syntax-highlighting, alongside a pointer to a separate list of ZSH frameworks and plugins. Managers cover Midnight Commander, ranger, nnn, screen, tmux, and tmux-cssh, and a text editors section starts with vi and vim. The document opens with the line Knowledge is powerful, be careful how you use it, which is a fair warning attached to a collection that also has a Hacking/Penetration Testing chapter. Consequence: a frontend or data developer finds the whole thing enormous and largely irrelevant, and the entries that would matter sit inside chapters that begin with shells.

One sentence per tool, never an install command or a version

Entries are a single line of description and nothing more. GNU Bash is introduced as an sh-compatible shell that incorporates useful features from the Korn shell and C shell, Zsh as a shell designed for interactive use that is also a scripting language, Starship as the cross-shell prompt written in Rust, powerlevel10k as a fast reimplementation of the Powerlevel9k ZSH theme, fzf as a general-purpose command-line fuzzy finder, z as something that tracks the folder you use the most so you can jump without typing the whole path, and tmux as a terminal multiplexer for switching between several programs in one terminal. None of those lines carries an install command, a version number, a platform, or a configuration snippet. The chapters that deliver copyable material are the ones named Shell One-liners, Shell Tricks, and Shell Functions. Consequence: the tool chapters are an index that sends you onward, and the licence needs a caveat. The collection is MIT under LICENSE.md while one entry, Midnight Commander, is noted as licensed under the GNU General Public License, so the collection licence grants you nothing over the software it points at.

Contribution is filtered on register as much as on usefulness

What gets added is judged partly on tone. The stated rules are that entries should be inviting and clear, not tiring, and useful, and the file then offers what it admits may be better rules: easy to contribute to, in Markdown plus HTML, and easy to find, with a simple table of contents that maybe is worth extending. The quality bar is written as a single diff line:

+ This repository is not meant to contain everything but only good quality stuff.

Contributors are asked to add valid, well reasoned explanations about their changes or comments, they are pointed at .github/CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request, and financial contributors are handled through an Open Collective page. Consequence: inviting and not tiring are taste judgements with no test attached, so a technically sound addition can be declined for register alone, and nobody can tell in advance which of the two rule sets will be applied. Read a chapter before proposing an entry, so your addition matches the surrounding voice, and expect to be asked to justify why a tool belongs in a list that is explicitly not meant to contain everything.

Editorial conclusion

It is worth bookmarking as a discovery index if you work in system administration, DevOps, or security work, and worth ignoring if you came looking for an installable tool, because the repository is a document rather than software. The chapters on shell one-liners, shell tricks, and shell functions are where the copyable value sits; the tool chapters are a directory of names that hands you to a vendor page. Before you depend on anything here, open every link you plan to use, because the last push was 2024-11-19 and the entries shown carry no date of their own, and remember that the asterisk marks a link someone already suspected was broken rather than a link anyone has since confirmed. If your team keeps a runbook, copy the entries you need into it with the date you checked them instead of pointing at the repository.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Official README
2. Project repository
3. README
4. Releases