OpenTUI Core

OpenTUI is a native terminal UI core written in Zig with TypeScript bindings. The native core exposes a C ABI and can be used from any language. OpenTUI powers OpenCode in production today and will also power terminal.shop. It is an extensible core with a focus on correctness, stability, and high performance. It provides a component-based architecture with flexible layout capabilities, allowing you to create complex terminal applications.

Documentation

• Getting Started - API and usage guide
• Development Guide - Building, testing, and contributing
• Tree-Sitter - Syntax highlighting integration
• Renderables vs Constructs - Understanding the component model
• Environment Variables - Configuration options

Install

bun install @opentui/core

Build

bun run build

This creates platform-specific libraries that are automatically loaded by the TypeScript layer.

Examples

bun install
bun run src/examples/index.ts

Benchmarks

Run native performance benchmarks:

bun run bench:native

See src/zig/bench.zig for available options like --filter and --mem.

NativeSpanFeed TypeScript benchmarks:

• src/benchmark/native-span-feed-benchmark.md

CLI Renderer

Renderables

Renderables are hierarchical objects that can be positioned, nested, styled and rendered to the terminal:

import { createCliRenderer, TextRenderable } from "@opentui/core"

const renderer = await createCliRenderer()

const obj = new TextRenderable(renderer, { id: "my-obj", content: "Hello, world!" })

renderer.root.add(obj)