This is cool! Using pure bash and unix tools is an interesting approach. I built Plandex[1] which has some similar goals (no dependencies, terminal-based, supports piping into context) but it takes quite a different route to get there—I’m using Go and compiling static binaries. It’s also ‘higher level’ and specifically focused on coding, whereas ell seems like a very lightweight and general purpose LLM tool. It reminds me a lot of Simon Willinson’s `llm` tool[2]. Are you familiar with it?
The recording feature also reminds me of savvy[3].
1 - https://github.com/plandex-ai/plandex