It does de-duplicate. It saves every command (even duplicates), but as soon as you search it only ever shows the last version you ran.

The reason it saves every command is so that it can produce statistics, for example exit code distribution and runs per day etc.

Oh, the screencast had dupe lvim at 10s and then there are issues like this https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin/issues/409.

The runs/code can be stored as list to get the distribution, though for typo I don't want any distribution, I just want them gone, and for identical commands with different comments I'd want a single run stat

These are the cleaning type of things that would be closer to magical

That issue is closed and fixed since almost a year. And as the author said, the 'list' command is supposed to list all invocations. When you search (Ctrl+R) you don't see duplicates (I guess the screencast might be old?).

It feels like you are just trying to find issues without having tried using it for real...

It feels like you're just trying to pretend the issue isn't real

> closed and fixed ... 'list' command is supposed to list all

This is NOT a fix, but a confirmation that this design flaw is unlikely to get fixed. I don't need fzf to be flooded with useless info either.

How would using it for real help here?

ZSH removes duplicates (not typos) if you configure it to do so.

Why should it store garbage in the database?

Why do you enter garbage in the terminal? But seriously from the next answer: „ The reason it saves every command is so that it can produce statistics, for example exit code distribution and runs per day etc“

Because I'm a human and err??? And what value do GIGO statistics have? The next answer doesn't defend you weird take that it must store garbage, that's still on you