GitHub - pshirshov/brain-damage: PoC Wayland compositor which draws apps in terminal through Kitty protocol. Totally Claude'd

termui

Run graphical Wayland applications in the terminal using the Kitty graphics protocol.

Yes, you see it right. It's kitty running in kitty under a Wayland compositor which renders it into kitty through kitty's graphics protocol.

Why? Because fuck you.

It wasn't me, it was Claude.

More:

Overview

termui acts as a minimal Wayland compositor that:

• Captures frames from Wayland applications
• Renders them in the terminal using Kitty's graphics protocol
• Translates terminal input (keyboard/mouse) back to Wayland events

Requirements

• A terminal supporting the Kitty graphics protocol (e.g., Kitty)
• Nix with flakes enabled (for dependencies)

Building

nix develop
cargo build --release

Usage

./target/release/termui <command> [args...]

Examples

# Run foot terminal
termui foot

# Run a GTK4 application
termui gtk4-demo

Controls

• Ctrl+Q or Ctrl+C - Exit termui

How it works

1. termui creates a Wayland socket and spawns the target application
2. The application renders to shared memory buffers (wl_shm)
3. termui captures frames on each surface commit
4. Frames are encoded and sent to the terminal via Kitty graphics protocol
5. Terminal input events are translated to Wayland pointer/keyboard events

Limitations

• Only supports wl_shm (software rendering) - no GPU acceleration
• Input latency depends on terminal and frame rate
• Some applications may not work correctly

License

MIT