scissors is a Unix CLI primitive for editor-based content approval, modelled on git's commit.cleanup=scissors convention. It opens your content in your editor and keeps the approved bytes (everything above the scissors line). Use it as a stdin->stdout filter, or point it at a file to edit in place.

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Install

pip install scissors        # PyPI (standalone binary, no Python needed at runtime)
uv tool install scissors    # uv
cargo install scissors      # crates.io

Usage

# Approve a PR body before submission
gh pr view 42 --json body --jq .body | scissors > approved.md && \
  gh pr edit 42 --body-file approved.md

# Edit and confirm a draft, with context for multi-draft sessions
echo "$DRAFT" | scissors --context "Issue #26 reply" > /tmp/out

# Non-interactive: approve as-is, no editor (CI, scripts, agents)
echo "$DRAFT" | scissors --yes > /tmp/out

The editor opens with your content followed by a scissors line:

your content here

# ------------------------ >8 ------------------------
# Do not modify or remove the line above.
# Everything below is context and will be stripped from the final content.
# ...

Edit the content above the line, save, and close. Everything below the scissors line is discarded.

The editor buffer

scissors opens the draft as a file named COMMIT_EDITMSG, the same name git commit uses. Editors that dim git commit messages (VS Code, Vim, Emacs with Magit, ...) dim this buffer the same way, so the # footer reads as greyed-out comments while you edit and the body stays plain. The cut is located by the >8 marker, so the footer is detected and stripped even if its # prefix gets altered.

File mode

Pass a file to edit it in place, like $EDITOR <file>:

scissors notes.md          # opens notes.md, edits it in place

On approve, the approved content atomically replaces the file. On abort (you emptied the buffer above the scissors line) or on any error, the file is left exactly as it was: editing happens in a COMMIT_EDITMSG sidecar in a temp directory beside the target, and the file is never touched until the final atomic rename, so it is never left half-written even if scissors is interrupted mid-edit. The atomic replace gives the file a new inode, so hard links break and a symlink is written through to its target. The mode bits are copied onto the new inode, but owner, group, ACLs and extended attributes reset to the editing user's defaults, so avoid sudo scissors <file> on a file whose ownership or security context must be preserved. scissors prints the sidecar path to stderr at launch, so you can reopen it if you lose the editor window. The outcome is signalled by the exit code (0/1/2); nothing is written to stdout in this mode.

To review a file's content without editing it in place, pipe it through the stdin filter instead: scissors < notes.md > approved.md.

In-place mode suits agents and scripts: write the draft to a path, run a bare scissors <path> (easy to put on an allowlist), then read the file back. No pipe and no command substitution are required.

Pass - as the file (scissors -) to force the stdin/stdout path explicitly; omitting the argument does the same.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	approved -- file written in place (file mode), or content on stdout (stdin)
1	aborted -- you emptied the content above the scissors line
2	error -- no editor available, editor failed, non-UTF-8 input, or I/O error

In stdin mode, on abort or error the draft tempfile is preserved and its path is printed to stderr. In file mode, on abort or error the file is left unchanged (the edit happens in a sidecar that is discarded).

Editor resolution

scissors uses $VISUAL, then $EDITOR, then falls back to vi. For GUI editors, set a blocking flag so the process waits for you to close the file:

export VISUAL="code --wait"
export VISUAL="subl -w"

Non-interactive / headless use

scissors is fail-closed: without an editor it errors (exit 2) rather than silently approving. For environments with no human at a terminal (CI, scripts, AI agents), pass --yes to approve the input as-is without opening an editor:

echo "$DRAFT" | scissors --yes   # approve verbatim, exit 0

This mirrors git commit (interactive editor vs -m/--no-edit): the same pipeline works interactively (edit) and unattended (--yes).

One asymmetry to note for scripts: with --yes, empty stdin is approved as-is (exit 0), but an empty or whitespace-only file is rejected (exit 1), since there is nothing to approve in place.

Running under a sandbox

Some environments (AI agents, restricted CI, Claude Code) run commands in a sandbox that blocks the IPC between a GUI editor's CLI (code --wait, cursor --wait, subl -w) and the running editor process. The CLI then returns immediately without opening anything, and scissors reports a silent-failure error (exit 2). Three ways to make it work inside a sandbox:

1. Use a TUI editor -- vi, nano, emacs -nw read the TTY directly and need no cross-process IPC: export VISUAL=nano
2. Exclude the GUI editor from the sandbox -- if your sandbox has an allowlist (e.g. Claude Code's sandbox.excludedCommands), add the binary: { "sandbox": { "excludedCommands": ["code *"] } }
3. Point $EDITOR at a helper the host can route to an editor running outside the sandbox.

scissors stays sandbox-agnostic: it honours $EDITOR like any Unix tool and surfaces a clear error when the editor never opens.

Library usage (Rust)

Both entry points take an Options builder so new knobs stay additive. Input is UTF-8 text only; non-UTF-8 bytes surface as an error before anything is written.

use scissors::{approve_in_editor, Options, Outcome};

// stdin-style: returns the approved text
match approve_in_editor("draft content", &Options::new().context("Issue #26 reply"))? {
    Outcome::Approved(text) => println!("approved: {text}"),
    Outcome::Aborted { draft_path } => eprintln!("aborted: {}", draft_path.display()),
}

use std::path::Path;
use scissors::{approve_file_in_place, FileOutcome, Options};

// in-place: the approved content is written back to the file
match approve_file_in_place(Path::new("notes.md"), &Options::new())? {
    FileOutcome::Approved => println!("notes.md updated"),
    FileOutcome::Aborted => eprintln!("aborted; notes.md unchanged"),
}

License

Dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0 at your option.