# witr

24 Hacker News commenters recommended witr and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Explains why a Linux process is running by showing its parent chain, a handier take than shell aliases. Main caveat: curl-based install and parent-only checks.

## Why people recommend it

- Handy, useful everyday terminal tool (7 comments): "Very cool utility! Simple tools like these keep me glued to the terminal." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46397259)) "This is extremely useful, will be added to the toolbox." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46397825)) "This is amazing. Thank you for sharing this." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46396102))
- Better than ad hoc shell aliases (3 comments): "Cool idea. Reminds me of my alias "whodis" which just lsofs a port to find out the pid who's got it open, but way more functional." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46399427)) "Great tool! I was looking to convert my decades-old shell script into something a bit more modern and user-friendly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46449944)) "I really like this. Something like this should already exist, stock." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46398443))
- Simple, minimal, no package manager (2 comments): "I like that it is simple, and doesn't (thank god) need npm or some other package manager." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46403761)) "Very cool utility! Simple tools like these keep me glued to the terminal." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46397259))

## What people warn about

- Parent-process reporting appears incomplete (3 comments): "mostly the ppid is outputted as the reason for starting" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46401076)) "it seems like it only checks for the parent processes?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46400653)) "Yes, this is a bug. Planning to fix it soon." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46401296))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [fzf](https://hackerapproved.com/p/fzf.md): 78 recommend
- [jq](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jq.md): 75 recommend
- [grep](https://hackerapproved.com/p/grep.md): 65 recommend
- [Atuin](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atuin.md): 63 recommend
- [GitHub CLI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/github-cli.md): 49 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "witr", https://hackerapproved.com/p/witr/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).