OpenTUI Playground

A playground project for experimenting with OpenTUI - a TypeScript library for building terminal user interfaces.

Prerequisites

Zig Installation Required

OpenTUI requires Zig to be installed on your system.

Windows Installation Instructions:

1. Download Zig from the official website: https://ziglang.org/download/
2. Choose the Windows x86_64 binary (latest stable or master)
3. Extract the archive to a location (e.g., C:\zig)
4. Add Zig to your PATH:
   • Open System Properties > Environment Variables
   • Edit the Path variable under System Variables
   • Add the path to your Zig folder (e.g., C:\zig)
   • Click OK to save
5. Verify installation by opening a new terminal and running:

   zig version
   

Alternatively, you can use package managers:

Using Chocolatey:

choco install zig

Using Scoop:

scoop install zig

Node.js

Node.js 24.11.1 is installed and ready.

Installation

After installing Zig, install project dependencies:

npm install

Running the Examples

Basic Core Example

npm run dev

This runs src/index.ts which uses @opentui/core directly.

React Example

npx tsx src/react-example.tsx

This demonstrates using OpenTUI with React components.

Project Structure

tui-playground/
├── src/
│   ├── index.ts          # Basic OpenTUI core example
│   └── react-example.tsx # React-based TUI example
├── package.json
├── tsconfig.json
└── README.md

Installed Packages

• @opentui/core@^0.1.59 - Core OpenTUI library
• @opentui/react@^0.1.59 - React reconciler for OpenTUI
• typescript - TypeScript compiler
• tsx - TypeScript execution engine
• @types/node - Node.js type definitions
• @types/react - React type definitions

Features

OpenTUI provides:

• Terminal capabilities detection
• Unicode and emoji support
• Syntax highlighting
• Mouse and keyboard input handling
• Flexbox layout via Yoga
• 2D and optional 3D graphics
• React, SolidJS, and Vue support

Resources

• OpenTUI GitHub
• NPM Package - @opentui/core
• NPM Package - @opentui/react
• Getting Started Guide

Notes

• OpenTUI is currently in development and not ready for production use
• The library combines TypeScript with performance-critical Zig native code
• Both imperative (core) and declarative (React/Solid/Vue) APIs are available