I built "Next.js for the terminal" in TypeScript — here's the architecture

A few months ago I started building (React for the terminal), terminaltui is in the same neighborhood but a step further — it ships routing, layout, and themes as defaults instead of "bring your own React patterns."

The file-based router

A terminaltui project is just two things: config.ts and pages/.

// pages/about.ts

import { card, markdown } from "terminaltui";



export const metadata = {

  label: "About",

  icon: "◆",

  order: 2,

};



export default function About() {

  return [

    card({ title: "About me", body: "Developer." }),

    markdown("Some markdown here."),

  ];

}

File paths map to routes the same way Next.js does:

pages/

  index.ts            → /

  about.ts            → /about

  projects/

    index.ts          → /projects

    [slug].ts         → /projects/:slug

Dynamic routes use bracket syntax. The page function gets { params: { slug: string } }.

Under the hood, the framework walks the pages/ directory at boot, compiles each TS file via esbuild (or imports directly under tsx in dev mode), and builds a route table. Spatial navigation is automatic — arrow keys move to the nearest focusable item by screen position. You never write a tabIndex.

You can read the if you want to see how the multi-session isolation works (it uses Node's AsyncLocalStorage so each session sees its own runtime context).

Why TypeScript instead of Go or Rust?

I get this question a lot. Honest answer: most existing TUI frameworks are written in Go (), or Python ( + the bundled demos (npx terminaltui demo restaurant, etc.) are the manual.

If any of those bother you, the . v1.8.1 is .

If you build something with it, I'd love to see it.