I wrote a minor mode to allow shells to always show the previous prompt in a "sticky" header.

This makes it easy to keep track of which commands have been run (even when the commands trigger many lines of output).

I originally intended to publish this as a package. I emailed emacs-devel@gnu.org with this intent (check the thread "New Package: sticky-shell"). It was pointed out that this could just be added to shell.el: it's just a few lines and the utility could be useful.

Let me know your thoughts, and if you'd like me to make any changes to the code.

Best,

Andrew