June 11, 2026
Terminal ghost or just hot air?
Show HN: Boo – screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty
A spooky new terminal tool drops, and the comments instantly demand receipts
TLDR: Boo is a new tool that keeps command-line sessions alive and makes them easier for scripts and AI to inspect. The community reaction was split between curiosity and suspicion, with fans praising the clean idea while skeptics immediately demanded proof it’s better than the tools people already use.
A new app called Boo just floated onto Hacker News promising to keep terminal sessions alive after disconnects and even let scripts or AI read the screen exactly the way a human would. In plain English: it’s a tool for people who live in command-line windows and hate losing their place. The creator is selling it as a cleaner, smarter take on old-school session tools, complete with a full-screen manager and automation tricks that sound almost suspiciously convenient.
But the real action was in the comments, where the crowd immediately went full "okay, but why should I care?" One of the strongest reactions came from users basically asking the developer to stop being mysterious and explain what makes Boo better than the old favorites. Another commenter dropped the classic startup-killer question by naming a rival and asking for “key differentiators,” which is Hacker News code for prove this isn’t just another shiny clone. That skepticism set the tone.
Still, not everyone came armed with a pitchfork. Some people loved the minimal vibe, praised the Ghostty-powered design, and said they were ready to “test drive” it. One user even dragged a competing tool, saying Zellij had been “a bit crashy recently,” which is the kind of low-key shade that keeps these threads alive. The funniest twist? A user tried the one-line install and immediately hit a ReadOnlyFileSystem error, turning Boo’s big debut into a tiny haunted-house jump scare. So yes: the launch had hype, side-eye, rival callouts, and a bug report before the applause even finished.
Key Points
- •Boo is a terminal multiplexer written in Zig that uses libghostty-vt to maintain exact rendered terminal state for each session.
- •The tool supports persistent sessions, a full-screen session manager, and faithful redraws including styles, cursor position, scrollback, titles, and terminal modes.
- •Boo includes headless automation commands such as `send`, `wait`, and `peek`, designed to work without a TTY and optionally output JSON.
- •The project provides installation for Linux and macOS, prebuilt binaries, and command-line operations for creating, attaching, listing, renaming, and killing sessions.
- •Development requires Zig 0.15.2, with unit tests, integration tests, automatic libghostty source builds, and optional Nix-based workflows.