danterm

About

danterm started out as a small AppKit wrapper around libghostty so I could get vertical tabs. Repo: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;danneu&#x2F;danterm About 3-4 weeks ago, I decided to replace libghostty with my own Swift terminal engine implementation, and the whole project is just Swift with no third-party deps -- only Apple&#x27;s swift-collection for a Deque impl. I started with a naive correctness implementation that passed third-party tests, and then I incremented to the optimized release of today with things like a packed byte arena for scrollback that grows on demand. The result is that it&#x27;s an 8 MB application that sits at 52 MB with 10 empty tabs open and grows to just 250 MB when those tabs are filled with 10k lines each. (kitty: 240 -> 790 MB, ghostty 1.3: 780 -> 1400 MB). It also has the best pty throughput as measured by kitty&#x27;s `kitten __benchmark__ --render`. Perhaps most interestingly is that this project is my latest experiment in how to use rigor to automate high-quality software with LLMs. I use things like ADRs, a docs&#x2F;research&#x2F; system, a review&#x2F;revise cycle on plans, and multi-pass workflows to pay back debt and find code improvement opportunities. For example: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;danneu&#x2F;danterm&#x2F;blob&#x2F;749942ffa1198f520c8b7... This project has put yet more writing on the wall, for me, that most software -- and then all software -- can be fully automated with just a human "taste-maker". It has some cute features like: - A `danterm <command>` CLI - A replayable pty flight recorder (`danterm tape`) - Usual fare like tabs, panes, themes, search, and a recovery system so that you can close danterm, reopen it, and it reads its prev state from disk. Even has a gimmicky todo system (per pane and per tab). - A semantic model powered by shell&#x2F;agent integrations where you notify danterm things like "command started (vim foo.sh)" and "agent waiting (claude code)". This seemed a lot more reasonable than trying to cleverly determine the state of the session from the pty stream. - A companion iPhone app that lets me control danterm remotely over Tailscale - A reusable Swift terminal engine that compiles on Linux (for fun, I started a gtk4 frontend) Anyways, I hope it&#x27;s interesting. It was a lot of work and it&#x27;s my daily driver terminal.

Discovery history

1. Show HN

   Sep 5, 2026 · 1 observations