Here’s one I have saved in my shell aliases.

nscript() {
    local name="${1:-nscript-$(printf '%s' $(echo "$RANDOM" | md5sum) | cut -c 1-10)}"
    echo -e "#!/usr/bin/env bash\n#set -Eeuxo pipefail\nset -e" > ./"$name".sh && chmod +x ./"$name".sh && hx ./"$name".sh
}
alias nsh='nscript'

Admittedly much more complicated than necessary, but it’s pretty full featured. first line constructs a filename for the new script from a generated 10 character random hash and prepends “nscript” and a user provided name.

The second line writes out the shebang and a few oft used bash flags, makes the file executable and opens in in my editor (Helix in my case).

The third line is just a shortened alias for the function.

I have a few mechanical keyboard projects that I need to print cases for and a chassis for a compact NAS build that I’m almost done tweaking and need to print eventually. Just functional stuff really

Even if you need something just once, just install it and then uninstall it, takes like 10 seconds.

apt install foo && apt remove foo

That’s essentially what nix-shell -p does. Not a special feature of nix, just nix’s way of doing the above.

Actually using it though is pretty convenient; it disappears on its own when I exit the shell. I used it just the other day with nix-shell -p ventoy to install ventoy onto an ssd, I may not need that program again for years. Just used it with audible-cli to download my library and strip the DRM with ffmpeg. Probably won’t be needing that for a while either.

The other thing to keep in mind is that since Nix is meant to be declarative, everything goes in a config file, which screams semi-permenant. Having to do that with ventoy and audible-cli would just be pretty inconvenient. That’s why it exists; due to how Nix is, you need a subcommand for temporary one-off operations.