rtk-win — Rust Token Killer for Windows

Native Windows fork of rtk — replaces Unix-only commands (ls, tree, wc, find) with Rust-native implementations and adds PowerShell cmdlet TOML filters for 60-90% LLM token savings on Windows.

What's Different

Area	Upstream rtk	rtk-win
ls, tree, wc, find	Call Unix binaries via shell	Rust-native using std::fs / walkdir
PowerShell cmdlets	Not supported	15 TOML filters (Get-ChildItem, Select-String, etc.)
Windows package managers	Not supported	winget TOML filter (strips progress, truncates tables)
Install	install.sh (Unix)	install.ps1 (PowerShell)
Hooks	Bash scripts (.sh)	PowerShell scripts (.ps1)
rtk init --opencode	Not available	Installs OpenCode plugin for transparent rewrite
System dependencies	libc, Unix signal handlers, process groups	All removed — pure Win32 API via Rust stdlib

Token Savings (Windows Benchmark)

Command                    Raw (avg)    RTK (avg)     Saved
ls (project src)             10,810         460       95.7%
ls (drivers large)           40,303       1,725       95.7%
wc (src .rs files)              878         160       81.8%
find (src .rs)                3,848         758       80.3%
find (src .toml)              2,612         768       70.6%
git status                       72          22       69.4%
tree (src dirs)               5,317       2,671       49.8%
winget list                   6,897       3,520       49.0%
systeminfo                    3,637       2,520       30.7%

OVERALL (15 tests):        97,029      35,456       63.5%

Run scripts/benchmark.ps1 on your machine to get your own numbers.

Installation

# From source (recommended)
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USER/rtk-win.git
cd rtk-win
.\install.ps1

# Or build manually
cargo build --release
Copy-Item target\release\rtk.exe $env:USERPROFILE\.cargo\bin\

Prerequisites

• Rust (MSVC toolchain, rustup default stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc)
• Windows 10+ (ARM64 or x64)

Quick Start

# Install for OpenCode
rtk init -g --opencode

# Or for Claude Code / Cline / Gemini CLI
rtk init -g --agent claude
rtk init --agent cline
rtk init -g --gemini

# Test it
rtk ls .                        # Compact directory listing
rtk tree src                    # Truncated directory tree
rtk wc src\*.rs                 # Line/word/byte counts
rtk find -name "*.rs"           # File search (grouped by directory)
rtk git status                  # Compact git status
rtk winget list                 # Truncated package list

Rust-Native Commands

These commands run entirely inside RTK — no external process needed:

• ls — Compact directory listing with human-readable sizes, grouped by type, extension summary, max_lines truncation
• tree — Unicode tree visualization, filters noise dirs (node_modules, .git, target), max_lines truncation
• wc — Line/word/byte/char counting with common prefix stripping for multi-file mode
• find — Glob-based file search supporting -name, -iname, -type, -maxdepth, results grouped by directory with extension summary (max 50 results by default)

PowerShell Cmdlet TOML Filters

15 TOML filter files enable RTK to strip headers, progress bars, and noise from PowerShell command output when routed through rtk proxy or the OpenCode plugin hook:

Get-ChildItem, Select-String, Get-Content, Measure-Object, Get-Process, Get-Service, Get-Help, Where-Object, Compare-Object, Get-Item, Get-Date, Get-Command, Get-Member, Get-Alias, Invoke-Command

All filters use (?i) case-insensitive matching and apply strip_ansi, max_lines, and truncate_lines_at for compact output.

Windows-Specific TOML Filters

• winget — Strips leading progress noise, ANSI spinner garbage, truncates long ARP paths, limits to 40 rows
• tasklist — Limits to 40 processes, truncates long lines at 80 chars
• systeminfo — Strips blank lines, limits to 30 key-value pairs

Build & Test

cargo build --release
cargo fmt --all
cargo clippy --all-targets
cargo test                        # 2222+ pass, 0 fail
.\scripts\benchmark.ps1           # Run Windows benchmark

Note: Full cargo test requires [profile.test] debug = 0 in Cargo.toml to avoid OOM during debug test compilation on Windows.

Architecture

CLI request  →  main.rs (Clap dispatch)
                    ├── Rust-native handler (ls, tree, wc, find, git, cargo, ...)
                    └── run_fallback()
                          └── TOML filter match
                                └── execute real command + apply filter pipeline
                                      (strip_ansi → replace → strip_lines → 
                                       truncate → head/tail → max_lines → on_empty)

For full details, see ARCHITECTURE.md and CONTRIBUTING.md (upstream docs, mostly applicable).

Differences from Upstream v0.43.0

• Removed all #[cfg(unix)] blocks across 6 files: main.rs, core/utils.rs, core/stream.rs, core/telemetry.rs, hooks/integrity.rs, hooks/init.rs
• Removed libc dependency from Cargo.toml
• Added /STACK:8388608 linker flag in build.rs for Windows stack size
• Replaced ls.rs, tree.rs, wc_cmd.rs with Rust-native implementations
• Added tool_exists check in search.rs with Windows-friendly error message
• Gemini hook changed from .sh to .ps1 extension
• Added 81 built-in TOML filters (41 upstream + 22 upstream additions + 15 PowerShell + winget + systeminfo + tasklist)
• Added install.ps1 for Windows-native installation
• Added scripts/benchmark.ps1 for Windows benchmarking
• Added [profile.test] debug = 0 to prevent OOM during test compilation

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE.

Forked from rtk-ai/rtk v0.43.0.