Where am I? What's here?

Open your terminal. You’ll see the prompt waiting:

Type this exactly:

pwd

Press Enter.

What just happened

The computer printed a line. Something like:

/Users/you

/home/you

That’s the path of the folder you’re currently in — a path exactly like the ones from Level 0. pwd stands for print working directory — fancy words for “tell me where I am.”

Every terminal session has a current folder (sometimes called the working directory). Every command you run happens from that folder unless you say otherwise. So the very first question you ever ask the terminal is “where am I right now?”

What’s in this folder?

Now type:

ls

ls means list. The terminal prints the names of every file and folder inside the folder you’re standing in — the same files you’d see if you opened Finder or File Explorer to the same spot.

The hidden stuff

Try this variation:

ls -la

You’ll see a lot more. Two things to notice:

Names that start with a dot (like .bashrc or .git) are hidden files. By default ls pretends they don’t exist. The -a flag means all — show hidden too.
The -l flag means long format — one file per line, with extras like size, who owns it, and when it was last changed.

You can stack flags. -la is just -l and -a together. That stacking trick works for almost every terminal command, and you’ll see it everywhere.

The shape every command takes

Notice what ls -la looks like:

command [options]

Or with a target:

command [options] target

Every command you’ll learn follows that shape. Once you see it, even commands you’ve never met become readable. cd Documents is just “cd, applied to Documents.” cp -r src dest is “cp, in recursive mode, from src to dest.” Same pattern. Forever.

You’ve already done it

That’s two commands. You can already answer:

Where am I? → pwd
What’s in here? → ls (or ls -la for the full picture)

These are the two commands you’ll type more than any other for the rest of your life with a terminal. Honest.

Try it here

No real terminal handy? Use the practice terminal below. Type pwd, press Enter, then type ls. You’ll earn the XP once both have run.