Ghostel.el: Terminal emulator powered by libghostty

jdormit

I recently switched from vterm to ghostel, and it is generally much, much better - noticeably faster (e.g. fancy TUI apps that try to refresh the whole terminal every frame actually work), more reliable input handling, and a nicer ELisp API. That being said, there are still some rough edges. Sometimes it fails to properly clear the terminal, leaving junk at the top of the buffer before the currrent prompt line. And on a couple of occasions it has totally frozen, with no fix other than killing the buffer and starting over. Overall, it’s very promising and totally usable as a daily driver, but it needs a bit of polish and bug fixes before I would consider it mature.

aftergibson

This is working great, it plus the Claude code integration has really adjusted how much I use Emacs. It's become a bit of a hub for me now.

dakra

Hi! Maintainer of Ghostel here. baokaola and I actually wanted to do a "Show HN" next week, but looks like someone was faster submitting the link. Have a look at the GitHub repo which is a bit nicer for a quick overview: https://github.com/dakra/ghostel To add some context, Ghostel is a terminal emulator for Emacs powered by libghostty-vt. There's a feature comparison vs vterm and eat: https://dakra.github.io/ghostel/#ghostel-vs-vterm And here is a gist with images to compare performance and correctness: https://gist.github.com/dakra/4a0b76ebcf5d52338e134864378465... But for me personally, it has not only replaced vterm/eat but also any other external terminal like kitty/Ghostty. Having your terminal text just like a normal Emacs buffer opens up so many possibilities and extension points that are just not available on any other terminal. Even simple stuff like searching in the scrollback, then navigating and selecting+copying a paragraph only with the keyboard. For every Emacs user that's so natural and fast in Ghostel while often cumbersome in other Terminals where I just reach to the mouse because it's easier. Happy to answer any questions and also like to hear feedback positive or negative. If you're an Emacs user and tried Ghostel and are still using Ghostty (or another external Terminal), is there something Ghostel is missing or is it just because you want some processes to run outside of Emacs? baokaola and I are also very active on GitHub, so feel free to open an issue if you have any.

ivanjermakov

> The native module is a prebuilt binary that auto-downloads on first use Why? Keep it a part of distribution.

LtdJorge

I think the title should mention Emacs somewhere. A terminal emulator is different than a terminal emulator for Emacs.

vijucat

Question: if I don't use TUIs or millions of lines of scrolling text, what am I missing by not using these newer terminal implementations? I use mintty on Windows and am pretty happy with it.

varjag

Been using it for bit over a month now. It's really nice that you can click on code references in Codex summaries and open them right there in Emacs buffers.

parentheses

Ghostty has crashed nightly for me with ~10 terminals open across a few windows. So, I haven't been able to run it nor would I want to embed it inside anything I daily drive.

guskel

Thank you so much for building this. I've been wanting something just like this and I'm trying it now and it's amazing. I was struggling with vterm and now this might become my daily driver.

iLemming

It would be nice to have some practical examples of how efficiently use its different input modes. On the surface the reasoning is straightforward - a terminal wants every keystroke. The editor also wants keystrokes for its own commands. These two desires are irreconcilable, so any editor-embedded terminal must have a way to switch "who owns the keyboard." That switch is a mode. There is no escaping it. But like people coming to Emacs from Neovim may get confused why is nvim +term has only two modes, but this one has 5, what's the point? Without clearly understanding the problem, the knee-jerk reaction might be "this thing is an over-engineered BS", while in truth Ghostel isn't more complex because it's over-engineered - it's more complex because it solves more of the problem - the extra modes are opt-in tools for tasks nvim simply doesn't address. But it's not super clear how in practice use that leverage efficently.

Ferret7446

Downloading a compiled module is a huge negative in the age of supply chain attacks; you're begging to get compromised.

nihsett

Does ghostty have any features that makes it better than kitty in anyway? I keep seeing this all over the place, but I still don't understand why it's better than existing options. Can someone help who's used both help me, what's the elevator pitch for this, why is it worth checking out?