This question seems to point in this direction of changing our shell syntax from `vo` to `ov`, based on Jef Raskin's Humane Interface http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/48051/how-to-extend-th... .. I imagine pluggable shell grammars would allow open ended exploration this way.

I see this strongly related to many combinators in FP too.

(system command arguments)

flip -> (system arguments command) curry -> (system arguments) command

# and for the humane touch:

thread (system (completing-read)) (completing-read)

etc etc

Oh, and BTW, GUIs didn't buy ergonomy, sometimes you need to open an application then the data (aka /tweet "bla"), early systems had a simple 1:1 map 'type' 'program' with an 'open-with' intermediate. Then they added 1:N ... One day it will be a tiny Hindley-Milner unifier ;)

The gui equivalent would be right-clicking on a thing. There's probably a lot on what you should put in that menu, and you could probably take some general principles from that.

It sounds to me (apart from the auto-suggest) that this is exactly like piping on the command line.

    echo "My random thoughts" | tweet

Naked Objects is an example of a UI driven by the underlying objects rather than by the use cases thought up by a programmer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_objects