February 19, 2026
Blue rings and bruised egos
Show HN: Ghostty-based terminal with vertical tabs and notifications
New Mac terminal rings for AI — fans cheer while Ghostty loyalists say “just upstream it”
TLDR: cmux is a new Mac terminal built on Ghostty with vertical tabs, AI ring alerts, and a split browser. Comments split: some want it upstreamed to Ghostty, others praise the native speed, while critics flag tab-drag quirks and tricky shortcuts—and a Tauri rival joins the chat.
Meet cmux, a new Mac terminal that borrows the look of Ghostty but adds drama-worthy upgrades: vertical tabs with readable labels, blue rings when your AI helper wants you, and even a split-screen browser so your “tiny robot intern” can click around your dev site. It’s a native macOS app built in Swift (not a web wrapper), reads your Ghostty themes, and lets you automate everything from the command line.
But the real fireworks are in the comments. One camp is already asking, why not just fold this into Ghostty? As rubyn00bie put it, why ship a whole new app instead of “upstreaming” the features. On the other side, early testers like pupppet are vibing with the concept but poking at rough edges—tab dragging feels unpredictable and folks want color-coded tabs for sanity. Then blorenz stormed in with a rival Tauri build (a lightweight web-tech app), calling it a “force multiplier,” and—boom—native vs. web app debate reignited.
The jokes came fast too: arjie roasted a finger-twister keyboard shortcut (“Ctrl–Cmd–]”) as piano practice, while goro-7 planted the loyalty flag with a firm “sticking with Ghostty.” Verdict? A delicious split: blue-ring converts excited by agent alerts and an in-app browser, versus loyalists and DIY builders who’d rather upgrade Ghostty or roll their own. Cue the popcorn.
Key Points
- •cmux is a native macOS terminal built on Ghostty with vertical/horizontal tabs, AI-oriented notifications, and a split in-app browser.
- •It reads existing Ghostty configurations and uses libghostty for GPU-accelerated rendering, aiming for fast startup and low memory usage.
- •A sidebar displays git branch, working directory, listening ports, and latest notification text; panes and tabs visually indicate when agents need attention.
- •Notifications are captured via OSC 9/99/777 sequences and a CLI (cmux notify) for integration with AI agents like Claude Code and OpenCode.
- •The in-app browser exposes a scriptable API (from agent-browser) for DOM access, clicks, form fills, and JS evaluation; installation is via DMG (Sparkle auto-updates) or Homebrew.