Regarding history: I have a function in my ZSH config which excludes certain things from the history. Especially things that can break stuff when my sausage fingers CTRL-R the wrong thing

Something like this:

    # Prevent certain strings from appearing in the history
    # Anything starting with a leading space is ignored
    # Anything containing "--force" or "whatever" is ignored
    function zshaddhistory() {
      emulate -L zsh
      if ! [[ "$1" =~ "(^ |--force|whatever)" ]] ; then
          print -sr -- "${1%%$'\n'}"
          fc -p
      else
          return 1
      fi
    }