A few months ago I started building terminaltui — a TypeScript framework for interactive terminal apps. The pitch is "Next.js for the terminal": write a pages/ directory of TS files, get a fully navigable TUI with file-based routing, components, themes, and SSH hosting.

It just hit v1.8.1 on npm with 2,142 passing tests. You can try it in zero seconds:

npx terminaltui try

Enter fullscreen mode

Exit fullscreen mode

That opens a 5-page guided tour of the framework — no install, no signup.

This post is the technical writeup: how the file-based router works, the layout engine, and the SSH hosting bit.…