TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool
- voidUpdate - 20601 sekunder sedanIf you're going to put a video demo on your main webpage, can it have play/pause and a control bar? So I can actually skip to a part I want to look at. Here's the actual video: https://tui.studio/screenshots/video.mp4.
Also, how does this handle terminal resizing? Are there options to anchor elements to the left/right etc, or will narrowing the terminal window just make everything fall off the side, or worse, all the text wraps?
- eterps - 27628 sekunder sedanThis is nonsensical, there is nothing textual about the UIs being shown here. It doesn't stop being a GUI if you have a 1:1 representation of the concept within character cells.
The UX actually matters, and TUIs are generally built for effectiveness and power (lazygit being an excellent example). But once you start adding mouse clickable tabs, buttons, checkboxes etc. you left the UX for TUIs behind and applied the UX expected for GUIs, it has become a GUI larping as a TUI.
- vidarh - 27041 sekunder sedanI really don't want my TUI's to look like GUI's rendered in low res. The appeal to me of a TUI is that it is built specifically to be a TUI, and that means eschewing complexity and detail, and favouring compact text.
- jbstack - 25689 sekunder sedanInteresting idea, but:
> Design once, generate production-ready code for your framework of choice. Switch targets without touching your design. Alpha notice: Code export is not functional yet. We're actively working on it — check back soon.
In other words, it isn't at all usable right now. You can't produce a TUI with it, not even a limited one.
- IAmGraydon - 137 sekunder sedanThis is so cool.
- stldev - 19561 sekunder sedanIgnore the haters. This is an excellent idea, I'm getting some old Borland vibes. Keep it up, can't wait to see where it goes!
- sunaookami - 21928 sekunder sedanVibe-coded trash, even says so in the Readme. Not sure why this gets voted to the frontpage.
- spiffyk - 19713 sekunder sedanFunny how you can tell a project is vibe-coded just from a first glance at its website. All these websites seem to somehow have the same visual style. Anyone noticed this?
- zahlman - 7012 sekunder sedanApparently we now write desktop applications intended for designing the UI of other desktop applications, in TypeScript that runs in a Docker container, using a bunch of web frameworks (including for CSS) and self-hosting an nginx server?
I would have expected a TUI editor to be itself a TUI.
- sabas123 - 25302 sekunder sedanWhat is the point of having this if code generation is not functional yet? That is the entire point of this app.
- pelcg - 19351 sekunder sedanIf you want inspiration on all kinds of TUIs on show and display Terminal Trove [1] is useful to get an idea for what other tools look like.
I find the search [2] also helpful.
- fidotron - 28675 sekunder sedanThis is going to end up with TUIs that resemble old BBS ANSI art, such as https://16colo.rs/
It completely misses the reason people like current TUIs.
- pillsburycat - 8276 sekunder sedanThis looks really cool. However, the current AI models are pretty good at designing UIs from prompts and even turning screenshots of mocks into full UIs. I'm not sure this visual design approach would save time vs simply prompting an AI agent.
That being said, I could see a niche market for a designer persona who is used to building in tools like figma.
- auvi - 17008 sekunder sedanFor exports, it is missing the ultimate: Borland Turbo Vision, the Rolls-Royce of TUI frameworks.
- ifh-hn - 17691 sekunder sedanWhy are these things being built on web technologies? There's loads of "modern" terminals that use typescript etc. to me terminal means lower level.
Also wheres the Linux version? You've Mac, windows, and docker. When someone says terminal to me I default to Linux.
- evrenesat - 4588 sekunder sedanIn this age, rich TUI's feels wrong to me. Tools that expose a minimal web server with a lightweight UI is much more welcome than a complex TUI. But for most interactive terminal apps, it feels more natural when there is a single input at a time, like a wizard interface.
- pcmoore - 27347 sekunder sedanWatched the video. Why isn't the editor a TUI itself?
- ctmnt - 10004 sekunder sedanOn one hand this is a neat idea. I've thought about how nice it would be to have a visual layout tool for text-based designs. The current offerings are slim. Of course, you could easily argue that if you need a visual tool for it, you've gone too far; even the most sophisticated TUIs are still extremely simple.
On the other hand, for this work as they describe, it needs to be a complete UI framework across a bunch of languages and built on top of a bunch of existing frameworks. That seems... ambitious. Building one UI framework for one language is plenty hard enough.
- __alexs - 24532 sekunder sedanThe TUI hype seems like nostalgia for COBOL mainframe apps that most people have never even used. A sort of secondhand cyberpunk role play with zero focus on actual UX.
Also if TUIs are so great, why isn't this a TUI app?
- TrevorFSmith - 19124 sekunder sedanThis is a vibe coded app and isn't what I'd want but still, it's interesting to consider what a good implementation of "Figma for TUIs" could be, especially if it avoids the trap of simply treating the console as a crude raster instead of taking advantage of text and keyboards. IMO we don't need WIMP GUI shoved into terminal emulators.
- tracker1 - 16842 sekunder sedanHalf surprised there's no raratui export with the other options. That said, probably lends itself more to Ink and @opentui/react. Also slightly disappointed at the lack of a direct Linux build for AppImage and/or Flathub. Also not using Github's releases which is a little curious.
- jiehong - 23771 sekunder sedanThe lack of accessibility of TUIs is not great in general.
I'd much rather terminals emulator provide a webview directly, and maybe use https://webtui.ironclad.sh/ if you really want the look.
I think it makes more sense for a cli to offer a mini webserver instead.
Think `fish_config`, but opened in the terminal directly [0].
[0]: like https://iterm2.com/browser-plugin.html
- seertaak - 23391 sekunder sedanA UI design tool for TUIs -- made with Electron?... fun times!
- gattilorenz - 28626 sekunder sedanLook up Visual Basic for Dos for a surprisingly good TUI editor!
- SvenL - 24947 sekunder sedanSo we’re going full circle here right? Can’t wait for the first TUI MVC/MVVM/MVP/M-whatever framework to show up.
- NSPG911 - 24033 sekunder sedanNope, check out something like wiretext, look at this example I put together very quickly
- tim-projects - 29178 sekunder sedanThis is so cool I immediately wanted to convert my apps. But then when I thought about it, well it's trying to recreate CSS but in a majorly worse way.
Browsers are ubiquitous and I can just tell ai to build a web page. I can't really see a use case other than novelty.
- Myrmornis - 16261 sekunder sedanTUIs built today should be usable by AI agents. I'm not sure exactly what it looks like but I'm imagining that every UI view has an associated CLI command that can yield precisely that view. Maybe like formally structured breadcrumbs, or maybe like Emacs "keyboard macros".
- pjmlp - 23915 sekunder sedanTurbo Vision and Clipper want their glory MS-DOS days back.
- Archit3ch - 19323 sekunder sedanSomewhat related: Tachikoma.jl can do windows inside a terminal UI. https://discourse.julialang.org/t/ann-tachikoma-jl-a-termina...
- mihir_kanzariya - 20986 sekunder sedanThe biggest pain point with TUIs has always been the design iteration loop. You're basically writing code blind, running it, tweaking numbers, running again. It's like writing CSS without a browser preview.
Something like this could genuinely help for the layout/positioning phase, even if you still hand-write the interaction logic. The debate about whether these are "real TUIs" kind of misses the point imo. Textual and Ratatui already blur that line with mouse support and rich widgets. The ship sailed on pure keyboard-only text interfaces a while ago.
What I'd actually want from a tool like this is to export to multiple TUI frameworks. Right now you're locked into one ecosystem and the code export isn't even working yet, which makes the whole thing feel premature.
- deevelton - 19788 sekunder sedanHave been spending so much time in the terminal lately for the first time in my life (non-developer here) that made this for fun to spruce it up: https://github.com/dvelton/terminal-profile-studio
- visarga - 13366 sekunder sedanI built something like this in 1993, it was used to design layouts for DOS apps and headers for printed listings. Imitating the BorlandPascal and Novel TUIs of the day
- injidup - 21440 sekunder sedanI'm not sure the utility of this kind of stuff anymore. It's relatively easy to sketch a layout on a napkin + prompt and then prompt claude code to use python textual as as TUI layer. I've had pretty good success with Textual+Claude so have a few colleagues. You could probably use Figma + claude etc as well.
- glhaynes - 28101 sekunder sedan> No install fuss — download and start designing immediately.
also
> Gatekeeper blocks the app immediately. You'll see either "TUIStudio cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer" or "TUIStudio is damaged and can't be opened" on newer macOS after quarantine flags the binary. To get past it: right-click the .app → Open → Open anyway — or go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → "Open Anyway".
- xvilka - 21925 sekunder sedanMissing Ratatui[1] support.
- delduca - 23179 sekunder sedanFor {root} sake I'm a designer. Mostly all the code has been written by Claude and ad latere.
- jbverschoor - 8437 sekunder sedanGuess who's back, back again?
VB's back, tell a friend.
- ganelonhb - 17989 sekunder sedanThe one thing these always miss is image protocols. Do you plan to support terminal image protocols like sixel, kitty image protocol, etc.?
- kantord - 30024 sekunder sedantip: your git repo's description (not readme, repo description) does not link the website. It should.
- chuckadams - 20980 sekunder sedanGotta say I did sort of expect this to be a TUI app itself.
- aavci - 17914 sekunder sedanThis looks really cool. Is the use case of getting an LLM to respond with custom TUIs something you have thoughts about?
- nout - 16426 sekunder sedanThat's cool. I literally vibed something similar a month ago for myself!
- sorenjan - 19213 sekunder sedanI wonder if one of the LLMs could generate code from a screenshot of a layout designed by this.
- dangoodmanUT - 17968 sekunder sedanThere's something incredibly ironic about a visual tool for designing TUIs...
- giancarlostoro - 23369 sekunder sedanWe got a RAD IDE for terminals before GTA6 and before anyone sensibly makes a replacement for Electron. Wild.
This is really cool though.
- sandos - 20206 sekunder sedanI would be REALLY REALLY impressed if it manages to do this without bugs. Just using pythons textual can be very complex, belive it or not. Maaging not only to that but other frameworks too sounds insanely complex. I have a strong feeling this is vibecoded from the commit history?`
Ah yes, it says clearly that on the github page. Still, if its works, I am then impressed by the LLM.
Edit: It does, in fact, NOT work for code export. Level of impressiveness massively dropped.
- _pdp_ - 24443 sekunder sedanAm I the only one who thinks the recent TUI explosion is absolutely not necessary?
I mean yes, code editor are great for this but a lot of the TUIs I see are so slow it begs the question why they exist to begin. CLIs are supposed to be remixable and scriptable.
I think a better architecture would be to generally keep CLIs work like CLIs and have separate processes that add terminal rendering functionalities for those that need / want it but in general it is an anti-pattern to start from this as default.
- __mharrison__ - 18692 sekunder sedanThe irony that a TUI studio is not written as a TUI...
- lagrange77 - 25834 sekunder sedanThe background ASCII animation is so cool! Is it an actual simulation?
- Venkymatam - 16247 sekunder sedanthis is a cool idea lol but is a pretty nonsensical explanation of what you can even do with it
- varjag - 25632 sekunder sedanTurbo Vision strikes back
- NoGravitas - 13650 sekunder sedanMissing ncurses support.
- aaronblohowiak - 16016 sekunder sedanSo this is a TUI WYSIWYG GUI ?
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- monkaiju - 16085 sekunder sedanI wish HN had flairs (tags) like Reddit and mandated a few for AI-related work (AI-Assisted, AI-meta, AI-vibecoding) or something so these could be filtered out
- aethorn - 29799 sekunder sedanThe website UI is unreal, I loved the idea
- raincole - 25600 sekunder sedanWhen your TUI is so complex that you need a GUI to design it, perhaps you shouldn't use TUI in the first place.
- gaigalas - 11947 sekunder sedanSeems nice.
I launched https://github.com/alganet/tuish yesterday (pure shell backend).
Exporting to pure shell could be a killer feature, especially for smaller and ad-hoc apps (no dependencies, no compilation, etc).
- jappgar - 25429 sekunder sedanWhy did they make a website?
- worthless-trash - 26578 sekunder sedanThe corners of the boxes appear in the wrong place in the cell.
I don't think there is utf8 characters that allow for drawing on the outside of the cell, (happy to be wrong)
┌ (U+250C), ┐ (U+2510), └ (U+2514), ┘ (U+2518) <-- these 4 draw in the middle of the cell.
「 (U+FF62), ⌟, (U+231F), <-- these are two that cover part of the outside, but not the other corners.
「┐└」
Can anyone tells me how to get those 'corner of cell' characters, including uprights and horizontals ?
- oefrha - 14587 sekunder sedanI really hate these pointlessly dynamic website backgrounds that make mobile devices hot to touch. Unfortunately vibe-coded websites love these.
- ramon156 - 17943 sekunder sedanNo ratatui?!
- MPSimmons - 25416 sekunder sedanThis is like QTdesigner but for the terminal. Huh.
- grilo16 - 32743 sekunder sedanNoice figma for terminals! Dude super cool idea, great job =D
- igtztorrero - 23924 sekunder sedanI want something like that, but for Bootstrap,Tailwind or Quasar
- moron4hire - 24178 sekunder sedanAnyone notice the computer image at the top of the page doesn't have the right number of keys?
- elxr - 24527 sekunder sedanThe fact that this isn't a TUI itself is a bit disappointing.
The fact that even the preview isn't a TUI is just lame. Keyboard controls are also non-functional right now.
- trollbridge - 26090 sekunder sedanI don’t want to be a curmudgeon, but why not just use CSS, HTML, React, etc. at this point? You could choose a style that looks like a TUI.
- lsaferite - 28443 sekunder sedanI find it slightly annoying and disappointing that the blocks saying what frameworks it's designed to export to aren't links to those frameworks.
- kantord - 30102 sekunder sedanthis looks insanely cool.
One of the most original ideas I have seen on HackerNews in the past few years.
- WhereIsTheTruth - 21833 sekunder sedanThis website eats a whole CPU core
Another W from the web developers mafia
- rvz - 22090 sekunder sedanNo idea why this is hyped up these days.
The only reason I can think of is what I said before [0] given that the web was destroyed by the same web developers, then so was the desktop (with Electron) and now of all places terminals are now getting destroyed with infinite slop like this.
This nonsense will continue and accelerate until it reaches hardware.
- themarogee - 9367 sekunder sedan[dead]
- miki_ships - 17608 sekunder sedan[flagged]
- Felixbot - 12791 sekunder sedan[flagged]
- clitui - 20122 sekunder sedan[dead]
- mipselaer - 35621 sekunder sedanAmazing cool design tool for TUI's I got it running instantly and it feels stable and complete as well. Only 10 stars in GitHub.
- webprofusion - 25373 sekunder sedanHa, well proof that AI let's you build anything you can imagine. Wait till I show you Remote Desktop, one day macOS and Linux will catch up.
Nördnytt! 🤓