Shell Quest

A pirate-themed CLI learning game that teaches real shell commands to kids (ages 3–10) through treasure hunting adventures. Single Go binary, no setup required beyond go build.

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What You'll Learn

Navigate 10 missions across Skull Island, each teaching specific shell commands through objectives with pirate story flair:

Mission	Location	Commands
1	Awakening at the Docks	ls, cat
2	The Jungle Crossroads	pwd, cd
3	The Hidden Cove	ls -a
4	The Captain's Log	cat (long files)
5	The Shipwright's Yard	mkdir, touch
6	The Duplication Ritual	cp
7	The Scrambled Hold	mv
8	The Bilge	rm
9	The Spyglass Plateau	find
10	The Root Vault	Final treasure

Features

• Split-pane TUI — story/objectives on the left, interactive shell on the right
• Real shell commands — commands run against a sandboxed virtual filesystem
• Player profiles — multiple pirate profiles with persistent progress (SQLite)
• Difficulty tiers — Beginner (now), Explorer and Master (coming soon)
• Hints — after 3 failed attempts, a clue appears
• Adventure log — track mission progress (Ctrl+L)
• Parent mode — lock the game behind a quick math quiz (Ctrl+P)

Install

Requires Go 1.23+.

git clone https://github.com/shanewilliams/shell-quest
cd shell-quest
go build -o shellquest ./cmd/shellquest
./shellquest

Controls

Key	Action
Enter	Run command
Ctrl+L	Adventure log
Ctrl+P	Parent mode
Ctrl+C	Quit

Tech

• Bubble Tea — TUI framework
• Lip Gloss — terminal styling
• modernc SQLite — pure Go, no CGo

Progress is saved to ~/.shellquest/progress.db.