Shell Overrides

LoopCLI now respects your environment. This guide explains how to change the shell globally and per step.

Detecting your shell

On first run LoopCLI detects the shell from $SHELL (Unix) or COMSPEC (Windows). View the current value with:

loopcli loop shell --show

Setting a global shell

Want to force every CLI step through zsh or fish?

loopcli loop shell --set /bin/zsh

Use loopcli loop shell --reset to fall back to automatic detection.

Per-step overrides

When adding a CLI step you can set a specific shell:

loopcli loop add-cli build "Install deps" npm --arg install --shell /usr/local/bin/fish

The per-step shell takes priority over the global shell.

Background tasks (preview)

Combine shell overrides with background mode (see the background workflows guide) to run dev servers or watchers without blocking the rest of the loop.

Troubleshooting

• Path not found: double-check the shell path exists and is executable.
• Windows PowerShell: set --set "C:\\Windows\\System32\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\powershell.exe".
• Environment variables: use --env KEY=value when adding CLI steps to inject shell-specific vars.