Is storing CLI manuals as fragments a good practice?

[aborruso]

Hi @simonw and thank you for this great tool.

I am thinking of storing as fragments, some manuals of the cli software I use most.
By making a single markdown file for each one.
I created for example one for Miller, like this cat mlr.md | llm fragments set mlr -. And now I can ask how to remove duplicates

llm -f mlr "how to remove duplicates?"

Is this a correct way to use fragments? Is it better to do it differently?

Thank you

[Muguett-DBY]

Yes, that's a good use of fragments. You can pass the file directly when setting the alias:

llm fragments set mlr-6-13 ./mlr.md
llm -f mlr-6-13 "How do I remove duplicates? Use the supplied Miller manual."

I'd include the manual version in the alias so it's clear which syntax you're asking about. The alias stores a snapshot of the content: editing mlr.md later doesn't update it, so run fragments set again after changing the file. Alternatively, llm -f ./mlr.md 'your question' reads the file for that call.

The main limit is size. The whole fragment is included in the prompt; LLM doesn't automatically retrieve only the relevant paragraphs. Storing it once saves space in the logs database, but doesn't by itself remove input-token costs or context-window limits. If a manual gets too large, I'd start with the relevant chapter rather than build a retrieval pipeline immediately.

Codex-assisted; checked against the current docs and fragment-resolution code.