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+# bb - A bitty browser for command line file management
+
+`bb` is a TUI console file browser that is:
+
+- Extremely lightweight (currently around 1.2K lines of code)
+- Highly interoperable with unix pipelines
+- Highly customizable and hackable
+- Without any build dependencies other than the C standard library (no ncurses)
+- A good proof-of-concept for making a TUI without using any libraries
+
+The core idea behind `bb` is that almost all actions are performed by piping
+selected files to external scripts, rather than hard-coding actions. Unix
+tools are very good at doing file management, the thing that `bb` adds is
+immediate visual feedback and rapid navigation.
+
+For example, normally on the command line, if you wanted to manually delete a
+handful of files, you would first get a listing of the files with `ls`, then
+type `rm` followed by typing out the names of the files (with some tab
+autocompletion). With `bb`, you can just launch `bb`, see all the files
+immediately, select the ones you want with a few keystrokes, and press `D` to
+delete them (or `d` for deleting with confirmation). The `D` key's behavior
+is defined in a single line of code in `config.h` to pipe the selected files
+to `xargs -0 rm -rf`. That's it! If you want to add a mapping to upload files to
+your server, you can just add a binding for `xargs scp user@example.com` or,
+if you have some complicated one-time task, you can just hit `|` and type in
+any arbitrary command and have the selected files piped to it.
+
+## Zero Dependencies
+
+There's a lot of TUI libraries out there like ncurses and termbox, but
+essentially all they do is write ANSI escape sequences to the terminal. `bb`
+does all of that by itself, just using basic calls to `write()`, with no
+external libraries beyond the C standard library. Since `bb` only has to
+support the terminal functionality that it uses itself, `bb`'s entire source
+code is less than half the size of the source code for an extremely compact
+library like termbox, and less than *half a percent* of the size of the source
+code for ncurses. I hope anyone checking out this project can see it as a great
+example of how you can build a full TUI without ncurses or any external
+libraries as long as you're willing to hand-write a few escape sequences.
+
+## Building
+
+`make`
+`sudo make install`
+
+## Usage
+
+Just run `bb` to launch the file browser. Press `?` for a full list of
+available key bindings. In short: `h`/`j`/`k`/`l` or arrow keys for navigation,
+`q` to quit, <space> to toggle selection, `d` to delete, `c` to copy, `m` to
+move, `r` to rename, `n` to create a new file, `N` to create a new directory,
+and `|` to pipe files to a command.
+
+## Hacking
+
+If you want to customize `bb`, you can add or change the key bindings by
+editing `config.h` and recompiling. In [suckless](https://suckless.org/) style,
+customizing means editing source code, and compilation is extremely fast.
+Key character constants are in `keys.h` and the rest of the code is in `bb.c`.
+
+## License
+
+`bb` is released under the MIT license. See the `LICENSE` file for full details.