The archive · Developer & Business Tools · Product decision · 2025–2026
term.everything bets the terminal can display any GUI app — HN 1,094 points, 8.1k stars
A from-scratch Wayland compositor renders real GUI windows into terminal cells — Show HN 1,094 points on 2025-09-09, 8.1k GitHub stars by Sept 2026.
term.everything (Late for Dinner Studios, LLC)
What the business is
term.everything is a Linux CLI program in open beta that runs GUI windows in a terminal — a built-from-scratch Wayland compositor whose output is terminal cells instead of a monitor, working on X11 and Wayland hosts and even over ssh.
How it started
mmulet built term.everything under Late for Dinner Studios, LLC, the maker of Fontemon, a video game that runs inside a font. The README states the provocation: every day another terminal file viewer ships, yet 'you can just use the file viewer you already have — in your terminal.' The answer was a compositor written from scratch in Go that draws to terminal cells, demonstrated by playing Fontemon inside a web browser over ssh.
What happened
The 2025-09-09 Show HN thread ran to 1,094 points and 144 comments, with the maker answering 'Can it run Doom?' by posting a Doom demo. The project ships beta releases from GitHub, renders at full resolution in image-capable terminals such as kitty and iTerm2, and community members ran a whole desktop — Firefox on KDE Neon inside a VM — inside a terminal. By the 2026-09-05 crawl the repo had 8.1k stars, 194 forks and 107 commits.
How it ended up
Still in open beta at roadmap stage one, 'Term some things' — the README warns that some or most apps may fail to launch or crash — as of 2026-09-05. No funding, pricing or further company details beyond the Late for Dinner Studios copyright are disclosed in the material.
Background
term.everything is a Linux CLI program that runs GUI windows inside a terminal. It is a Wayland compositor built from scratch whose output device is terminal cells rather than a monitor, so ordinary apps — browsers, video players, even Doom — render in the terminal the user already has open, locally or over ssh.
The product bet is an inversion of a whole mini-industry: instead of building another terminal file viewer with prettier box-drawing characters, make the terminal able to display the actual GUI apps, so the old viewer becomes unnecessary. The README puts it bluntly: 'stop making terminal file viewers because you can just use the file viewer you already have — in your terminal.'
Creator mmulet, working under Late for Dinner Studios, LLC (maker of Fontemon, a video game that runs in a font), demoed the idea by playing that font game inside a browser over ssh, then running the Wing It! movie, Firefox at full resolution via kitty/iTerm2 image protocols, and a whole desktop-in-terminal session. The 2025-09-09 Show HN drew 1,094 points and 144 comments, and by the 2026-09-05 crawl the repo carried 8.1k stars, 194 forks and 107 commits with public beta downloads.
What has to be true
- It inverted the category: rather than a new text-based viewer for files, it made the terminal able to display the existing GUI apps, so no application needed to be rewritten.
- The core bet was technical and uncompromising: a from-scratch Wayland compositor drawing to terminal cells, portable across X11 and Wayland hosts and over ssh.
- Showy proof made the idea instantly legible: a font-based video game in a browser in a terminal over ssh, Doom, and a full desktop inside a terminal travelled further than any spec.
- The roadmap stayed honest — 'Term some things', with crashes expected and issues invited — which set the right expectation for an early compositor and turned bug reports into a contribution channel.
What can be applied
When users keep rebuilding the same wheel — here, terminal file viewers — attack the layer below: make the platform they are already on able to run the real thing.
Aftermath
As of 2026-09-05 term.everything is live as an open beta: GitHub Releases offer downloadable builds, the repo shows 8.1k stars, 194 forks and 107 commits, and development continues in Go with 'a smidge of C'. The roadmap still sits at stage one, 'Term some things', with most apps expected to fail until the compositor matures. No funding, price, revenue or company details beyond the Late for Dinner Studios, LLC copyright appear in the material, so the project reads as a well-loved technical passion product rather than a funded startup.
Sources
- Show HN: Term.everything – Run any GUI app in the terminal
- mmulet/term.everything — GitHub repository
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