ghostty-org

ghostty-org / ghostling

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A minimum viable terminal emulator built on top of the libghostty C API. Ex minimo, infinita nascuntur. 👻🐣

96
4
100% credibility
Found Mar 21, 2026 at 96 stars -- GitGems finds repos before they trend. Get early access to the next one.
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AI Analysis
C
AI Summary

Ghostling is a minimal demo application that creates a basic terminal emulator window running a shell, supporting features like text reflow, mouse input, scrolling, and styling.

How It Works

1
🔍 Discover Ghostling

You hear about Ghostling, a simple demo that shows off a basic terminal window right on your screen.

2
📥 Get the files

Download the single example file and instructions to try it out yourself.

3
⚙️ Set it up

Follow the easy steps to prepare everything on your computer so it's ready to run.

4
🚀 Launch the terminal

Open the app and watch as a window pops up with your usual command shell waiting for you.

5
⌨️ Start using it

Type commands, click with the mouse, scroll through history, and see colors and styles come alive.

6
📐 Resize freely

Drag the window edges to make it bigger or smaller, and the text adjusts perfectly every time.

✅ Enjoy your terminal

You now have a lightweight, speedy terminal window that handles all the basics just right.

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Star Growth

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AI-Generated Review

What is ghostling?

Ghostling delivers a bare-bones terminal emulator in a single C file, embedding your default shell via PTY and rendering it with Raylib for windowing. Built on the libghostty C API, it handles core VT emulation like text reflow on resize, 24-bit colors, Unicode graphemes, Kitty keyboard protocol, and mouse tracking modes without any libc dependencies. Developers get a working terminal demo that proves libghostty's embeddability, perfect for minimum viable dataspace github experiments or prototyping like a minimum viable company terminal.

Why is it gaining traction?

Unlike bloated terminal kits, ghostling stays ruthlessly minimal—single-threaded, 2D rendering—to showcase libghostty's SIMD-optimized parsing and fuzzed VT state in under 100 lines of glue code. Users notice snappy keyboard/mouse input, scrollbar drag-scroll, and focus reporting right away, with scrollback and styles that just work. Its CMake build fetches Raylib automatically, hitting github minimum requirements like CMake 3.19+ and Zig 0.15, making it a quick hook for embedding terminals anywhere.

Who should use this?

C or Zig developers embedding terminals in games, editors, or custom GUIs, especially those eyeing libghostty for accurate emulation without windowing baggage. It's for prototyping minimum viable population tools or testing PTY integrations, not daily drivers—think indie devs building Raylib apps with shell access, or folks exploring Kitty protocols beyond standard emulators.

Verdict

Grab ghostling if you're evaluating libghostty for custom terminals; its 96 stars and 1.0% credibility score reflect early demo status with solid docs but no tests or Windows polish yet. Maturity is low for production, but it nails the minimum viable terminal promise—fork and extend for real wins.

(198 words)

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