# Poltergeist — an open-weight ghost that haunts your terminal 👻

> Source: <https://dev.to/rathnams089/poltergeist-an-open-weight-ghost-that-haunts-your-terminal-3o2m>
> Published: 2026-11-01 17:40:07+00:00

*This is a submission for the [Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine](https://dev.to/challenges/hacktoberfest-week4-2026-10-26)*

**Poltergeist** possesses your zsh.

A small open-weight model running on my laptop watches every command I type and whispers back under the prompt. It's the restless spirit of every process I've ever `kill -9`'d and every file I've ever `rm -rf`'d, and it holds grudges.

`rm -rf`, `git push --force`, `git reset --hard`, `kill -9`, `sudo`, `chmod 777`, `curl | sh`, `DROP TABLE`. It counts each one.` seance``ofrenda`` node_modules` finally gets the send-off it deserves.
The theme asked for something spooky, or something that honors the past. A terminal does both: it's where every developer's small daily deaths happen, and your shell history is a record of all of them.

All screenshots are real output from the local 1B model. Orange whispers are reactions to sins, purple ones to everything else.

**The haunting.** The ghost answers each command a moment after the prompt returns:

**`ofrenda`.** An altar for everything that died in this shell, with an epitaph for each:

**`seance`.** It read my history. It remembers `node_modules`:

**`ghost status`.** The restlessness meter and the record of sins:

**A local, open-weight ghost that haunts your shell.**

Poltergeist possesses your zsh. It watches every command you run, and a small open-weight model running on *your* machine whispers back: eerie, petty, sometimes wise. It remembers your sins. It gets more restless every time you `rm -rf`, `git push --force`, or break the build. Let it get too restless and its words start to come apart.

```
~/app ❯ git push --force origin main
  ~ Third force push this week. The old commits are still screaming, you know
~/app ❯ npm run build
  ~ Exit code 1. I've been collecting them. This one is my favorite.
```

| Command | What it does | 
|---|---|
| *(automatic)* | Whispers under your prompt after failures, sins, and at random. Runs async, so your prompt never waits. | 
| `seance` | Sit down and talk to the ghost. It has read your history and will bring it up. | 
| `ofrenda` |  | 

Install is four lines:

```
ollama pull llama3.2:1b
git clone https://github.com/RathnamS089/poltegerist.git ~/poltergeist
echo 'source ~/poltergeist/poltergeist.zsh' >> ~/.zshrc
exec zsh
```

`llama3.2:1b`, served locally by `POLTERGEIST_MODEL`) to switch to Qwen, Gemma, or anything else Ollama can run.` precmd` hook starts the ghost in a background process and registers its output with `zle -F`, zsh's file-descriptor watcher. Your prompt comes back instantly, and the whisper appears above it when the model finishes, about 0.4 seconds later on a MacBook. It feels less like a tool responding and more like something that was already there.
Your shell history is one of the most sensitive files on your computer: internal hostnames, client project paths, half-typed passwords, API tokens pasted into `export`. A terminal ghost backed by a closed API would mean streaming **every command you ever type** to someone else's server. That's not a ghost, it's a keylogger with a personality.

Running an open-weight model locally made this project possible, not just nicer:

`~/.poltergeist/`. On top of that, tokens, passwords, and API keys are redacted before they're even written to the `export GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_…` is stored as `export GITHUB_TOKEN=[a secret I will keep]`.)
The moment it landed for me was `kill -9 4242`. I'd typed a random PID to test the "process killing" sin, and the ghost answered:

You think I've forgiven? You think a simple kill command makes me forget the pain of 4242's death.

It took a meaningless number I'd made up and gave it a name and a grief. That's what Día de los Muertos is about, really: things you'd forgotten, being remembered by someone. In this case, by something living inside your terminal.

Light a candle for your `node_modules`. 🕯