Pray CLI

Pray cli allows you to bring prayer into the command line interface - whether that be for a peaceful moment of contemplation with The Lord, or for easily inserting prayers into your work (a logged prayer to St. Carlo Acutis never hurt a shell script or server's reliability).

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║                  Prayer of Intercession for Technical Problems                 ║
║                                                                                ║
║    Almighty and eternal God, you created us in your image, and you bid us      ║
║    seek all that is good and true and beautiful, fully manifest only in the    ║
║    divine person of your only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ.                      ║
║                                                                                ║
║    You have inspired your servant, St. Carlo Acutis, to seek Your goodness,    ║
║    to proclaim Your truth, and to portray Your beauty through technology.      ║
║                                                                                ║
║    I humbly ask your servant's prayers, that I too may lead others to you      ║
║    through technology.                                                         ║
║                                                                                ║
║    I humbly ask, through the intercession of St. Carlo, that you grant me      ║
║    clarity and patience in my technological work, specifically for "pray cli". ║
║                                                                                ║
║    Enlighten my understanding and direct my hands in every design and in       ║
║    every line of code, that my work may always serve your greater glory        ║
║    and benefit those who will use what I create.                               ║
║                                                                                ║
║                         Through Christ our Lord. Amen.                         ║
║                                                                                ║
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Getting started

Install

You'll need Go 1.25 or newer.

go install github.com/jamesmagoo/pray-cli/cmd/pray@latest

This puts pray in $(go env GOPATH)/bin, so make sure that folder is on your PATH.

Or build it from a clone:

git clone https://github.com/jamesmagoo/pray-cli
cd pray-cli
just install        # or: go install ./cmd/pray

See what's available

pray list

hail-mary         Hail Mary                                       en la
our-father        Our Father                                      en la
st-carlo-acutis   Prayer of Intercession for Technical Problems   en

Each line shows the prayer's name, its title and the languages it's available in. Running pray on its own shows the same list. Narrow it down by tag, or see the titles in Latin:

pray list --tag marian
pray list --lang la

Pray

Type pray and the name of a prayer:

pray hail mary

Hail Mary

Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

You don't need the exact name. pray matches a prayer's name, title and nicknames, and the start of any word in them:

pray ave            # a nickname for the Hail Mary
pray carlo          # the Prayer of Intercession for Technical Problems
pray saint carlo    # "saint", "st" and "st." all work
pray acut           # the start of a word is enough

If what you type could mean more than one prayer, pray lists the options so you can be more specific.

Pray for someone or something

Add an intention with --for:

pray hail mary --for "my mum"
pray carlo --for "the server migration"

Some prayers have a place for the intention in their text. The St. Carlo prayer, for example, asks for help "specifically for the server migration". Otherwise the intention is named before the prayer, as you would say it aloud:

Hail Mary

For my mum

Hail Mary, full of grace,
…

Pray in Latin

pray hail mary --lang la      # Ave Maria

If a prayer hasn't been translated yet, you get the English.

Copy a prayer

pray copy hail mary
pray copy carlo --for "the release"

This puts the prayer on your clipboard as plain text, ready to paste into a message, a document or a commit. On Linux it needs xclip, xsel or wl-clipboard installed.

Use it in scripts

When the output is piped or redirected, pray always writes plain text, so it's safe to log:

#!/bin/sh
pray carlo --for "tonight's deploy" >> deploy.log
./deploy.sh

Options

Option	What it does
--for "<intention>"	Pray for someone or something
--lang <code>	Language: en (default) or la
--tag <tag>	With pray list: only prayers with this tag, e.g. marian
-h, --help	Help for pray or any command, e.g. pray copy --help

Coming Soon...

1. rosary mode!
2. more prayers
3. more languages
4. your contributions!