HN Showcase
Back to browse
Gridland: make terminal apps that also run in the browser

Gridland: make terminal apps that also run in the browser

by rothific·Mar 24, 2026·111 points·14 comments
Visit ProjectView on HN

AI Analysis

●●SolidNiche GemCozy

Canvas renderer beats xterm.js for TUI demos — lets users try before installing.

Strengths
  • •OpenTUI + canvas rendering eliminates flickering and achieves near-instant load times
  • •Solves real friction: users can demo TUIs before committing to installation
  • •ShadCN UI registry provides pre-built components for consistent terminal interfaces
Weaknesses
  • •Author admits it 'probably doesn't need to exist' — limited real-world use cases
  • •Niche audience: only matters if you're already building terminal applications
Target Audience

TUI developers, CLI tool creators, open source maintainers

Similar To

Ink · xterm.js · Blessed

Post Description

Hi everyone,

Gridland is a runtime + ShadCN UI registry that makes it possible to build terminal apps that run in the browser as well as the native terminal. This is useful for demoing TUIs so that users know what they're getting before they are invested enough to install them. And, tbh, it's also just super fun!

Gridland is the successor to Ink Web (ink-web.dev) which is the same concept, but using Ink + xterm.js. After building Ink Web, we continued experimenting and found that using OpenTUI and a canvas renderer performed better with less flickering and nearly instant load times.

We're excited to continue iterating on this. I expect a lot of criticism from the "why does this need to exist" angle, and tbh, it probably doesn't - it's really mostly just for fun, but we still think the demo use case mentioned previously has potential.

- Chris + Jess

Similar Projects