[loa-in-backup]

That's entirely not true, the shell remembers a lot for you, the current state and the execution of commands can depend in any measure on environment variables and set them, also current directory and time of day, calling script, current history, the name used to call the script (if it has many links), your current line of input (in autocompletion handler).

The shell can also indicate it's state however you want - synchronously, asynchronously, before every input (PS1, PS2, etc.)