1. What?

bitsh is a shell interface that lets you "sign into" Bitcom, a virtual unix computer on Bitcoin.

The main use case for Bitcom currently is to manage and publish OP_RETURN based application protocols through the Bitcom decentralized directory.

Each account effectively represents an application protocol, and you can customize the home folder of your application protocol to globally publish the protocol to the decentralized Bitcom directory.

Learn more here.

2. Install

Install bitsh globally.

npm install -g bitsh

2. Usage

Run bitsh


3. How is Bitsh related to Bitcom?

There is already an NPM package named bitcom, which is a precursor of the bitsh module.

Both packages let you access Bitcom, but bitsh is much more powerful as it's not just a one-off command line application, but an entire shell interface you log into.

Think of the bitcom package as a one-off command line app like git, whereas bitsh is like Bash, but for Bitcom.

4. Key management

Bitsh is also a full fledged HD wallet. Bitsh creates a hidden folder named .bitcom under your home directory. This folder is used to maintain the generated extended private/public keys you can use to log into Bitcom and publish your application protocols.

The folder structure looks like this:

  1. The .bitcom folder is automatically created in your home directory when you first launch bitsh
  2. The .bitcom folder contains a single .seed file which contains the seed HD keys from which you will derive your real keys from.
  3. The .bitcom/hd folder maintains the generated keys, incrementing the index every time you create a new key.
  4. The .bitcom/wif folder maintains NON-HD keys you import. You can import external keys simply by running bitsh with bitsh [WIF to import].

5. Commands

You can list the supported commands by typing in


Here are the currently supported commands:

a. cat

You can either use > or to to import bit://b://c:// URIs to a Bitcom local file

cat X > Y

is equivalent to

cat X to Y

b. echo

You can assign string content to a Bitcom local file

echo "hello world" > description

is equivalent to

echo "hello world" to description

c. history

The history command lists all the Bitcom activities for the account.


Or you can run the command for another account:

history ~19HxigV4QyBv3tHpQVcUEQyq1pzZVdoAut

d. ls

Display all Bitcom local file names


or display all files for another account:

ls ~9HxigV4QyBv3tHpQVcUEQyq1pzZVdoAut

e. route

Enable or Add bit:// routes to application protocols.

Learn more at bit:// specification.

f. useradd

Register your account on Bitcom. This signals that your account is taken.


g. whoami

Display current account information