dakra

dakra / ghostel

Public

Terminal emulator powered by libghostty

65
3
100% credibility
Found Apr 05, 2026 at 65 stars -- GitGems finds repos before they trend. Get early access to the next one.
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AI Analysis
Emacs Lisp
AI Summary

Ghostel provides a high-performance terminal emulator integrated into Emacs, featuring rich VT emulation, shell integration, and smooth rendering.

How It Works

1
📖 Discover Ghostel

You hear about Ghostel from Emacs friends—it's a speedy way to run a full terminal right inside your editor.

2
🛠️ Add to Emacs

You simply tell Emacs to include Ghostel using a short setup line, like adding a helpful tool to your toolbox.

3
📥 Get Helper Ready

The first time, Emacs offers to grab or prepare a small helper piece so everything works smoothly—no hassle.

4
🚀 Launch Terminal

Hit a quick key combo to open your terminal window inside Emacs, feeling instantly at home with shell commands.

5
⌨️ Type and Navigate

Type commands, jump between prompts, scroll back easily, and use mouse or keys just like a regular terminal.

6
🔗 Click Links and Copy

Spot clickable web links or file paths, copy text without fuss, and even paste smartly into your shell.

🎉 Supercharged Workflow

Now your editor has a blazing-fast terminal that syncs folders, colors, and feels perfectly integrated—work flows effortlessly!

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Star Growth

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AI-Generated Review

What is ghostel?

Ghostel embeds a fast terminal emulator directly into Emacs buffers, powered by the libghostty-vt engine from the Ghostty terminal. It runs your shell process via Elisp while handling VT emulation, rendering, and input through a native dynamic module—auto-downloaded for macOS or Linux. Developers get true color support, clickable OSC 8 hyperlinks, and shell integration for bash/zsh/fish without config tweaks, all in a familiar Emacs workflow.

Why is it gaining traction?

It crushes vterm in benchmarks—72 MB/s throughput on plain text vs 33 MB/s—while adding modern perks like Kitty keyboard protocol, SGR mouse passthrough for TUIs like htop, and automatic directory tracking via OSC 7. Copy mode with prompt jumps, drag-and-drop, and adaptive 30fps redraw make typing feel snappy, even during bulk output. As a terminal emulator linux/mac alternative, it auto-injects shell scripts, linkifies plain URLs/files, and supports OSC 52 clipboard over SSH.

Who should use this?

Emacs power users running shells, vim/neovim TUIs, or remote sessions who outgrew vterm's limits. Ideal for Arch terminal emulator fans in Emacs, or macOS devs debugging via PTY with mouse support. Skip if you need Tramp integration or pure Elisp like eat.

Verdict

Swap vterm for ghostel if you want faster rendering and fresh features—docs are thorough, tests cover Elisp/native, benchmarks are runnable. At 65 stars and 1.0% credibility, it's early but stable for daily use; build from Zig source if prebuilts lag.

(198 words)

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