TTYphoon

• Multimedia Terminal Emulator
• Screenshots
  • Output Blocks
  • Structured Text
  • Tables
  • Images
  • Tmux Support
  • Highlighted Search Results
  • Markdown Viewer
  • Config Files
  • Swagger
  • Non-Intrusive AI
• How It Works
• Whats Left To Do
  • Escape Codes
    • VT100
    • VT52 mode
    • VT200 mode
    • Tektronix 4014 mode
    • Window management codes
    • Extended features
    • Common application support
  • Application Usability
• Supported Platforms
• Install Guide
  • VT Debugging
  • AI Tracing
• How To Support

Multimedia Terminal Emulator

The aim of this project is to provide an easy to use terminal emulator that supports inlining multimedia widgets.

Currently the project is very alpha.

The idea behind this terminal emulator is that is can be used by any $SHELL, however hooks will be built into Murex so the terminal will be instantly usable even before wider support across other shells and command line applications is adopted.

At its heart, TTYphoon is a regular terminal emulator. Like Kitty, iTerm2, and PuTTY (to name a few). But where TTYphoon differs is that it also supports inlining rich content. Some terminal emulators support inlining images. Others might also allow videos. But none bar some edge case Electron terminals offer collapsible trees for JSON printouts. Easy to navigate directory views. Nor any other interactive elements that we have come to expect on modern user interfaces.

The few terminal emulators that do attempt to offer this usually fail to be good, or even just compatible, with all the CLI tools that we've come to depend on.

TTYphoon aims to do both well. Even if you never want for any interactive widgets, TTYphoon will be a good terminal emulator. And for those who want a little more GUI in their CLI, TTYphoon will be a great modern user interface.

Screenshots

Output Blocks

Command output is grouped into blocks to make it easier to visually see the separation between different command output.

Those blocks are coloured too, to help identify whether a command succeeded or failed.

Those blocks can be highlighted by hovering over them

And even collapsed, hidden from view

Structured Text

IDE-like tools for working with structured text, like JSON. Hover over a branch to highlight its child nodes

Click to collapse that block of text

Tables

Output can be presented as tables. Which can be sorted and even filtered using SQL. All without having to rerun the commands that generated that output

Images

Support for inlined images, where images are treated as images. for example they can be copied to clipboard

Tmux Support

Tmux support built in using tmux's control plane. This allows for the power of tmux but with the easy of use and elegance of being fully integrated into the terminal emulator

(in this screenshot, tmux's prefix key was rebinded to F2 in ~/.tmux.conf)

Highlighted Search Results

Search terms can be highlighted to quickly find instances of that term

Markdown Viewer

You can write notes in markdown alongside your terminal sessions. View readme's, have your documentation with you instead of switching between windows

And you can even execute the code blocks inline. Bringing you the flexibility of Jupyter Notebooks and the power of a full terminal emulator

Config Files

Work with JSON and YAML config files more easily

Swagger

Native support for Swagger and OpenAPI files. So you don't need to be a curl expert all of the time

Non-Intrusive AI

AI is crammed everywhere - even where you don't want it. TTYphoon integrates AI but does so non-intrusively. It's there if you need to quickly debug something. Or want to quickly generate code. Or not there if you prefer. It isn't a clown constantly fighting you for your attention.

How It Works

TTYphoon native code in the backend to provide fast computation and then pushes the last mile rendering to webkit.

This ensures that the terminal reuses performant existing technologies which have already been fine-tuned by larger organisations like Apple, Microsoft and Google. But without the massive overhead of running Electron or other Chrome-based solutions.

The multimedia and interactive components will be passed from the controlling terminal applications via ANSI escape sequences. Before groan, yes I agree that in-band escape sequences are a lousy way of encoding meta-information. However to succeed at being a good terminal emulator, it needs to support some historic design decisions no matter how archaic they might seem today. This allows TTYphoon to work with existing terminal applications and for third parties to easily add support for their applications to render rich content in TTYphoon without breaking compatibility for legacy terminal emulators.

Whats Left To Do

In short, a lot!! Some of what has been detailed above is still in a very alpha state. And while there is lots of error handling and unit tests, test coverage is still pretty low.

Below is a high level TODO list of features and compatibility. If an item is ticked but not working as expected, then please raise an issue in Github.

Escape Codes

VT100

• C1 codes
  • common: can run most CLI applications
  • broad: can run older or more CLI applications
  • complete: xterm compatible
• CSI codes
  • common: can run most CLI applications
  • broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
  • complete: xterm compatible
• SGR codes
  • common: can run most CLI applications
  • broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
  • complete: xterm compatible
  • extended underline: kitty compatible
• OSC codes
  • common: can run most CLI applications
  • broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
  • complete: xterm compatible
• DCS codes
  • common: can run most CLI applications
  • broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
  • complete: xterm compatible
• Alt character sets
• Wide characters
  • vt100 (ASCII characters)
  • Unicode (eg logograph-centric languages and emoticons)
• Keyboard
  • Ctrl modifiers
  • Alt modifiers
  • Shift modifiers
  • special keys (eg function keys, number pad, etc)
    • glitch free (some bugs still exist)
  • tmux support for modifiers
• Mouse tracking
  • common: can run most CLI applications
  • broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
  • complete: xterm compatible

VT52 mode

• cursor movements
• special modes

VT200 mode

Some compatibility already exists. Detailed breakdown coming...

Tektronix 4014 mode

• graphics plotting
• text rendering

Window management codes

eg xterm and similar terminal emulators

• titlebar can be changed
• window can be moved and resized (WILL NOT IMPLEMENT)
• window can be minimized and restored

Extended features

• Hyperlink support
  • Auto-hyperlink files
  • Auto-hyperlink URLs
  • ANSI escape sequence supported (rejected because of safety concerns)
• Bracketed paste mode
• Inlining images
  • TTYphoon codes
  • iterm2 compatible
  • Kitty compatible
  • sixel graphics
  • ReGIS graphics
• Code folding
• Table sorting
  • alpha: available but expect changes to the API
  • stable: available to use in Murex

Common application support

• Supports tmux
  • usable from CLI
  • glitch-free from CLI
  • tmux control mode supported
• Supports vim
  • usable
  • glitch-free
• Supports murex
  • usable
  • glitch-free

Application Usability

• Terminal can be resized
• Scrollback history
  • usability hints added
• discoverability hints added
• Typeface can be changed
• Colour scheme can be changed
  • supports iTerm2 colour themes
• Bell can be changed
• Default term size can be changed
• Default command / shell can be changed

Supported Platforms

Support for the following platforms is planned:

• Linux
  • tested on Arch
  • tested on Ubuntu
  • tested on Rocky
• BSD
  • tested on FreeBSD
  • tested on NetBSD
  • tested on OpenBSD
  • tested on DragonflyBSD
• macOS
  • tested on 12.x, Monterey
  • tested on 13.x, Ventura
  • tested on 14.x, Sonoma
  • tested on 15.x, Sequoia
• Windows
  • PTY support implemented
  • tested on Windows 10
  • tested on Windows 11

Install Guide

Currently TTYphoon can only be compiled from source.

To do so you will need the following installed:

• C compiler (eg GNU C)
• Go compiler
• wails command line tool
• GNU Make (available by default on POSIX systems)

Aside from that, it's as easy as running make build from the git repository root directory.

VT Debugging

The terminal emulator functions can provide verbose logging for debugging. To enable this, build with -tags debug flag. Please note that this will add a lot of noise to the stdout of the terminal used to launch TTYphoon.

AI Tracing

The AI features, prompts sent to LLMs and messages between MCP tools can be traced for debugging. To enable this, build with -tags trace. Trace messages are sent to the stdout of the terminal used to launch TTYphoon.

How To Support

Regardless of your time and skill set, there are multiple ways you can support this project:

• Contributing code: This could be bug fixes, new features, or even just correcting any typos.

• Testing: There is a plethora of different software that needs to run inside a terminal emulator and a multitude of distinct platforms that this could run on. Any support testing TTYphoon would be greatly appreciated.

• Documentation: This is possibly the hardest part of any project to get right. Eventually documentation for this will follow the same structure as Murex Rocks (albeit its own website) however, for now, any documentation written in markdown is better than none.

• Architecture discussions: I'm always open to discussing code theory. And if it results in building a better terminal emulator, then that is a worthwhile discussion to have.

• Porting escape codes to other applications: Currently Murex is the pioneer for supporting TTYphoon-specific ANSI escape codes. However it would be good to see some of these extensions expanded out further. Maybe even to a point where this terminal emulator isn't required any more than a place to beta test future proposed escape sequences.