My friend and I, both Neovim enthusiasts, wanted a Lua-based harness to customize our terminals and editors as freely as we do in Neovim. After finding existing tools like Pi too reliant on JavaScript, we chose Lua for its fit and performance potential, eventually building ito—a minimal, Lua-native terminal UI library. Every abstraction, from providers to styling, can be done in Lua.
Inspired by Ratatui but determined to go our own way, we created ito to enable full TUI development in Lua. To showcase its power, I built a custom canvas implementation, exported it to WASM, and launched an interactive website for experimenting with Lua-based UIs. We also provide an llms.txt for vibe-coders.
The library is available at github.com/uji-labs/ito, and the accompanying harness at github.com/uji-labs/uji. The project invites users to build cool terminal interfaces with Lua, offering live preview, error-resilient editing, and tools for keyboard navigation and fullscreen mode.
المصدر: Hacker News · لخّصه HeadlinesBriefing