l0ng-ai d69d8710d7 perf(terminal): never queue the frame behind the grid lock
One UI thread paints every pane in every window, and the thread holding the
grid lock is the pane's own reader part-way through feeding a batch of output
into the emulator. Waiting for it wired one pane's write speed to the frame
rate of the whole window — the read-side twin of #709, which was this same
thread parked in `write(2)` for a stalled link.

`build_grid` now takes the lock with `try_lock_unfair` and returns `None` when
it cannot have it, so that frame paints the one before it; nobody can see a
frame of lag. Unfair rather than queued on purpose: a painter that queued would
make the reader wait for a frame it is not going to get anyway, and skipping
the queue is safe precisely because it never waits. Two frames still block,
because neither has anything to fall back on — the first frame a pane ever
paints, and the frame after a resize, whose previous grid is the wrong shape.

The cells therefore have to survive a refused frame, so the shared `GRID_BUF`
thread_local is gone and each pane owns its own `grid_buf` and `grid_snap` on
the view. What made the buffer reusable was always that it is the previous
frame *of this pane*; one shared scratch buffer could not be that once a frame
could decline to rebuild it. The `buf.clear()`/`resize` moves below the lock
for the same reason.

`key_context` and `any_selection` read frame-cached copies of the terminal mode
and the selection flag, refreshed by one `try_lock` at the top of `render`
rather than one per caller. gpui matches keystrokes against the context the
last painted frame published, so the mode was already a frame-old reading even
when it locked. Anything with a real decision to make still asks the terminal
itself — `alternate_paste` is the chord that cannot be a frame late.
`sync_scrollbar` stops blocking too: the scrollbar is a picture of where the
grid is, not worth parking a window to refresh a thumb.

Guarded by `a_frame_that_cannot_have_the_grid_leaves_the_previous_one_alone`,
which reproduces "the reader has it" with no second thread and no timing —
`try_lock` fails against a lock this thread already holds.
2026-09-08 16:33:29 +08:00
2026-09-07 21:00:55 +08:00

tty7

tty7

A terminal workbench: persistent sessions, remote work, agents.

Pure Rust · GPU rendering on Zed's gpui · VT core from Alacritty


CI Version Platforms License Discord

English · 简体中文


tty7 with a tab sidebar of agent sessions across several repos, running Claude Code

Why

A background server owns your shells and panes — not the window. Everything below follows from that.

  • Performance — ~2× the throughput of Alacritty, Ghostty, or Kitty (benchmarks)
  • Persistent sessions — quit or reboot; your shells and supported agent sessions keep running, no tmux
  • Agent-aware — Claude Code, Codex & co.: status, notifications, and git context for every repo at once
  • Scriptable by agents — one agent opens a pane for another, hands off a task, waits, and reads the result, with or without the GUI running
  • Editor-grade input — suggestions, completion, highlighting, history search, with no plugin to install
  • Remote development — files, repos, panes, and git data stay on the remote machine, over a native SSH stack
  • Git beside the terminal — source control, diffs, and worktrees without leaving the window

Install

Native builds for macOS, Windows, and Linux on Releases:

macOS …-macos-arm64.dmg · …-x86_64.dmg drag into Applications
Windows …-setup.exe · portable ….zip
Linux …-x86_64.AppImage chmod +x and run — X11/Wayland libraries bundled

What's inside

Agent-aware per-pane detection (19 CLIs) · status dot · notifications · branch + diff · tray icon when input is needed · resume after reboot · tab sidebar grouped by repository
CLI + Skills bundled tty7 CLI · agent skill · run streams a command and exits with its code · split · send · wait --until free · capture
Editor-grade input ghost suggestions from history · explained tab completion · syntax highlighting · multi-line editing · click places the caret · ⌃ R fuzzy history
Window tabs & splits · ⌘ P palette · ⌘ F scrollback search · ⌘ J panel with process tree and listening ports · 13 themes, your own YAML, iTerm2 import · IME
Shell integration injected when a pane starts, nothing to install · prompt marks · working directory · exit codes · command-finished notifications · zsh, bash, fish, PowerShell, WSL, remote panes
Remote workspaces remote files, repos, changes, diffs, worktrees, tabs, and panes · reconnect from any client and continue where you left off
SSH native russh stack: profiles with keychain secrets · SFTP panel · port forwarding · jump hosts · one-time, unprivileged tty7-server install
Git panel follows the focused pane · stage, commit, amend, branch, push, stash · side-by-side or unified diffs · commit graph with cherry-pick, revert, and reset · a new worktree opens its own tab

Supported agents

Detection is free: brand avatar, branch + diff, tab title. Status takes one click under Settings → Agents to install that agent's hook, and brings the status dot, notifications, the tray icon, tty7 wait, and resume after a reboot. Fork needs both — the agent's own fork command, and the hook that tells tty7 which session to fork.

The full support matrix, all nineteen
Agent Detected Status · resume Fork
Claude Code
Codex
Grok
OpenCode
Oh My Pi
Droid
Qwen Code
Goose
Gemini
Copilot
Kimi Code
Pi
Aider
Amp
Cursor
Auggie
Hermes
Vibe
Antigravity

None of them are wrapped or proxied — the agent you start is the agent you get, in a normal PTY, with its own interface. An agent launched through a wrapper script can be mapped to one by name with agent_commands in config.json.

Documentation

Full documentation lives in docs/keyboard shortcuts · config.json · CLI reference. The agent-facing CLI interface is also documented in skills/tty7/SKILL.md.

Install the skill with:

npx skills add l0ng-ai/tty7    # install
npx skills update tty7         # update later

Benchmarks

Same machine, same day, same 155×40 grid — Apple M1 Pro, macOS 26.3.1, five-run averages (2026-07-04):

tty7 Alacritty Ghostty Kitty
Plaintext I/O — 11 MB cat (lower = better) 95 ms 239 ms 179 ms 185 ms
DOOM-fire frame rate (higher = better) 888 fps 485 fps 552 fps 617 fps
Cold-launch memory 116 MB¹ 105 MB 128 MB 130 MB

¹ GUI 105 MB + the persistent server 11 MB.

Methodology and one-command reproduction: scripts/bench/.


S
Description
A terminal workbench in pure Rust: shells, persistent sessions, SSH, coding agents. GPU-rendered on Zed's gpui, VT core from Alacritty.
Readme Apache-2.0
34 MiB
Languages
Rust 99.1%
Shell 0.5%
PowerShell 0.2%
Inno Setup 0.1%