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How to use hackingtool

Step-by-step walkthroughs of the console. Every step below is something you type and something you get back — no prior knowledge of the codebase needed.

Authorized targets only. Everything here assumes you own the target or hold written permission to test it. hackingtool never runs a step without asking you first, and never invents results.

1. First run

  1. Install it (see the README). From a checkout, the quickest path that puts hackingtool on your PATH is:

    git clone https://github.com/Z4nzu/hackingtool.git
cd hackingtool
pipx install .

  2. Launch it:

    hackingtool

  3. On the first launch hackingtool creates its home directory — nothing is written outside it:

    Path What it is
    ~/.hackingtool/config.json your settings (defaults on first run)
    ~/.hackingtool/.env commented secrets template, chmod 600 — no active secret in it
    ~/.hackingtool/tools/ where tools you install are cloned/built
    ~/.hackingtool/history your ↑/↓ command history

  4. You land on the banner + prompt. The header line tells you what you have: OS, IP, and 22 categories · 217 active · 59 archived (that count includes the built-in Update/Uninstall menu; the tool catalog itself is 21 categories / 215 tools).

  5. Type /help for the command card, and q (or /quit, Ctrl-D) to leave.

If your terminal isn't interactive, or prompt_toolkit isn't available, you get the classic numbered menu instead — same features, numbers instead of commands. Force it any time with hackingtool --classic.

2. Learn the grammar in 60 seconds

There are exactly three things you can type:

You type It means Example
/… a command you run /search subdomain
@… a thing you name @nmap, @tag:osint
anything else plain-English "what I want to do" crack a wifi handshake

Try these in order:

  1. /tags — prints every tag with its tool count (63 tags in use).
  2. @tag:osint — lists the tools carrying that tag, then lets you pick one by number.
  3. @nmap — opens a tool straight away (matching is case-insensitive with a fuzzy fallback, so @nmpa still finds it).
  4. /search wordlist — keyword search over names, descriptions and tags.
  5. crack a wifi handshake — no slash, no at-sign: the recommender reads your words and shows matching tools.

Tab completes commands, tool names and tags. ↑/↓ walk your history. Ctrl-C clears the current line; Ctrl-D exits.

3. Open and install a tool

  1. Open it: @nuclei (or /run nuclei).
  2. You get the tool's card: description, project link, and — where curated — a usage cheatsheet of real commands for common tasks.
  3. Choose from the numbered menu:
    • 1 install the tool
    • 2 run it
    • c (or cmd) ask for the exact command for a goal, when the tool has a usage cheatsheet — it answers from the curated cheatsheet first, and only asks a model if nothing matches. Nothing is executed; you get a command to read and copy.
    • 98 open the project page
    • 99 back
  4. Inside a category listing, 97 installs every not-yet-installed tool in that category and 98 opens the archived tools of that category (if it has any).

If a tool is already on your PATH from your distro (apt, brew, Kali's metapackages), hackingtool reuses that binary instead of re-cloning it.

4. Find a tool that isn't in the catalog (/find)

/find answers "what should I use for X?" — first from the 215 curated tools, then from the GitHub search API, ranked with a reason for each hit. It is suggest-only: it never clones, installs or runs anything, and it makes zero model calls.

  1. Ask in plain English:

    /find hidden directories on a website

  2. You get two blocks:

    • In your toolbox (vetted) — matching tools already in the catalog.
    • Found on GitHub — NOT vetted by us — up to 5 maintained repos with stars, license, a one-line description, the reason each ranked (16446★ · trusted author (ships in our catalog) · active · matches: fuzzer, web) and a git clone … line to copy. Read the repo before you run it — that warning is there because nobody has vetted these for you.

  3. To keep one, press a at the prompt, then the result number:

    [a] add one to your toolbox · [Enter] done: a
which? 1-5: 2
Added.  /Users/you/.hackingtool/found.yaml

  4. What that writes: an entry in ~/.hackingtool/found.yaml under a Discovered tools category — title, tags, description, project URL. It deliberately stores no install or run command, so a discovered entry can never execute anything; it is a bookmark that shows up in your menu and in /search on the next launch.

  5. Out-of-scope asks are refused before any network call, with an authorized alternative where one exists:

    /find build a wifi jammer
Out of scope: Jamming is a denial-of-service attack and is out of scope. For
authorized work, wifi AUDITING tools test your own/scoped networks:
aircrack-ng, hcxtools, wifite (offline WPA/WPA2 handshake cracking).

    Defensive and DFIR phrasing ("detect a SYN flood", "hunt for…", "triage AV false positives") is never refused.

Without a token you get 10 searches per minute from GitHub. See step 7 to raise that to 30.

5. Plan and run an objective (/goal)

/goal turns one objective into a short, ordered plan of real commands, then runs the steps you approve, one at a time.

  1. State the objective:

    /goal find live subdomains of example.com

  2. hackingtool plans (one model call, made against a vetted operator methodology) and prints the plan: each step's tool, the exact argv it would run, why it's there, and — for tools you don't have — an install hint.

  3. Confirm authorization. Nothing runs before you answer y:

    ⚠  This goal will run tools against:  example.com
   Confirm you are AUTHORIZED to test this target? [y/N]

  4. Approve step by step:

    ─ step 1/4 ─ subfinder -d example.com -silent
  [y] run  [s] skip  [e] edit  [q] abort  ›
    • y runs it (list-form, never through a shell) and prints the output when it finishes — steps run in the goal's workspace directory, with a 30-minute cap
    • s skips it
    • e lets you edit the command first — the edited command is what gets run and what gets logged
    • q aborts the rest

    Steps whose tool isn't installed are skipped automatically and reported at the end, with the install hint from the plan.

  5. Everything lands in a timestamped workspace:

    ~/.hackingtool/goals/2026-07-26T18-40-12-123456/
├── plan.json          the drafted plan
├── run.log            UTC-stamped: authorization, per-step decision, outcome
└── step-1-subfinder.txt   raw output of each step you ran

Two guarantees worth knowing: the model is called once, for planning only, and tool output is never fed back to it — so nothing a target prints can steer the next step. And a step is only ever a list of arguments, never a shell string.

No model configured? /goal says so and falls back to plain tool recommendations for the same objective.

6. Connect a model (/config)

The AI layer is opt-in and bring-your-own-key. Without it everything still works: recommendations fall back to a keyword matcher, /find never needed a model, and commands come from the curated cheatsheets.

Option A — a hosted OpenAI-compatible endpoint

  1. Open the settings editor:

    /config

    ↑/↓ move, ←/→ change a value (saved immediately), Enter edits a free-text row, t tests the connection, Esc closes.

  2. Set ai_base_url (e.g. https://api.openai.com/v1) and ai_model.

  3. Select the ai_key row, press Enter, paste your key. It is masked while typing and written to ~/.hackingtool/.env (mode 600) — never to config.json, never printed back.

  4. Test it:

    /config test
✓ AI connection OK  <your-model> replied 'connected'

Option B — a local model with Ollama

  1. Install and start Ollama, then ollama pull llama3.
  2. Leave ai_base_url empty and set ai_model to the model you pulled.
  3. /config test to confirm.

Any key can also be set in one line, e.g. /config theme cyan, /config show_archived true, /config background_runner off. Environment variables (HACKINGTOOL_AI_BASE_URL, HACKINGTOOL_AI_MODEL, HACKINGTOOL_AI_KEY, HACKINGTOOL_AI_PROVIDER) always win over config.json.

7. Add a GitHub token for /find (/config github)

Optional. It buys one thing: GitHub's search rate limit goes from 10 to 30 requests per minute. The token needs no scopes and no permissions at all — never grant it any.

  1. Check your current state:

    /config github
○ GitHub  no token configured — unauthenticated search is 10 req/min

    hackingtool then prints the exact steps. They are:

  2. GitHub → your profile picture → Settings

  3. Left sidebar → Developer settings

  4. Personal access tokens → Fine-grained tokens → Generate new token

  5. Name it (e.g. hackingtool-find) and pick an expiration.

  6. Resource owner: yourself. Repository access: leave the default — do NOT select any repositories.

  7. Permissions: select none at all. (GitHub: "Tokens always include read-only access to all public repositories on GitHub.")

  8. Generate the token and copy it.

  9. Add it to ~/.hackingtool/.env (the file is already chmod 600):

    HACKINGTOOL_GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_your-token-here

  10. Verify:

    /config github
✓ GitHub token OK  token OK — search limit 30 req/min

Classic tokens work too: Developer settings → Tokens (classic) → Generate new token → tick NO scopes at all. GITHUB_TOKEN / GH_TOKEN from your environment are picked up as well. The token is never echoed back and is only ever sent to api.github.com.

8. Run tools in background panes

Long scans shouldn't block your console. If tmux is installed, hackingtool keeps one detached session called hackingtool and gives each background job its own labeled window.

  1. Add & to a /run:

    /run nmap -sV -oA scan 10.0.0.5 &
▶ started 'nmap' in background — /attach to view

    A bare /run nmap & opens a shell already cd'd into the tool's directory, with the tool's first cheatsheet command typed in as a comment.

  2. See what's running — the status line under the prompt shows ▶ N running, and:

    /panes          (alias /jobs)
  nmap (window 0)

  3. Watch one: /attach — this hands your terminal to tmux. Press Ctrl-b then d to detach and come back to the console.

  4. Stop one, or all: /kill nmap · /kill all.

No tmux? Nothing breaks — hackingtool says so and opens the tool inline instead. Turn backgrounding off entirely with /config background_runner off.

9. Headless mode: engagements, pipelines, reports

The same catalog drives a non-interactive orchestrator, for CI or a scripted engagement. Findings are normalized into one findings.json you can grep, diff or feed into other tooling.

# create/extend an engagement and run the default recon pipeline against it
hackingtool --engagement acme --targets example.com --pipeline recon

# a file of targets, one per line
hackingtool --engagement acme --targets ./scope.txt --pipeline recon

# (re)generate the deterministic Markdown report
hackingtool --engagement acme --report

# opt-in AI passes over the REAL findings only
hackingtool --engagement acme --ai-summary
hackingtool --engagement acme --ai-report     # writes report.draft.md

--engagement is required in headless mode. Out-of-scope targets are flagged and logged before anything runs. --ai-summary and --ai-report only ever summarize findings that exist — the deterministic report.md is never overwritten by the AI draft.

Where things live

Path Contents
~/.hackingtool/config.json settings (/config)
~/.hackingtool/.env API key + GitHub token, mode 600
~/.hackingtool/found.yaml tools you kept from /find
~/.hackingtool/goals/<utc-timestamp>/ /goal plan, run log, step output
~/.hackingtool/tools/ installed tools
~/.hackingtool/hackingtool.log command/audit log
~/.hackingtool/history prompt history

Related reading: full tool catalog · operator playbook (also /skill) · SECURITY.md · CONTRIBUTING.md