PowerShell – including Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core – is a task automation and configuration management framework from Microsoft. It consists of a command-line shell and its associated scripting language, built on the .NET Core and .NET Framework.
Within PowerShell, administrative tasks are generally performed by cmdlets (pronounced command-lets) which are specialised .NET classes implementing a particular operation.
Cmdlets can be grouped together into scripts, executables or be instantiating regular .NET classes, which work by access data in different data stores which are made available to the PowerShell runtime via PowerShell providers.
Although PowerShell initially started as a Windows-only component, it was made open-source and cross-platform on 18 August 2016.