The Art of the cd Create: Streamlining Your Terminal Workflow

If you spend any time working in a command-line interface, you already know the rhythmic, repetitive dance of starting a new project folder:

$ mkdir my-awesome-project
$ cd my-awesome-project

It is a small friction point—typing out the directory name twice, pressing up-arrow or re-typing to change directories right after creating it. But across thousands of terminal sessions over a career, those extra keystrokes add up. Enter the concept of the cd create workflow: combining directory creation and navigation into a single, seamless command.

Why the Two-Step Dance Slows You Down

Human cognitive flow in software development relies heavily on momentum. Every time you have to break your train of thought to coordinate two sequential commands for a single logical intent (“make a home for my code and go there”), you experience micro-friction.

While tools like modern IDEs or project generators (npx create-react-app, cargo new) often handle directory creation automatically, manual project scaffolding still happens constantly. Whether you are spinning up a quick script, testing a bug, or organizing documentation, you need a faster way.

Building Your Own cdcreate (or mkcd) Shortcut

Most shells (Bash, Zsh, Fish) do not come with a built-in single command out of the box that both creates and enters a directory, but they make it remarkably easy to write your own.