Calyx

A macOS 26+ native terminal application built on libghostty with Liquid Glass UI.

Features

• libghostty terminal engine -- Metal GPU-accelerated rendering via Ghostty v1.3.1 submodule
• Liquid Glass UI -- native macOS 26 Tahoe design language with customizable theme color (8 presets + custom hex/color picker; Ghostty preset reads your Ghostty config's background color). Text color adapts automatically: Ghostty preset follows Ghostty's foreground config, other presets switch between white/black based on theme color luminance (demo video)
• Tab Groups -- 10 color presets, collapsible/expandable sections with chevron toggle, double-click to rename groups or individual tabs, drag-to-reorder tabs in tab bar and sidebar
• Split Panes -- horizontal and vertical splits with directional focus navigation
• Command Palette -- search and execute all operations with Cmd+Shift+P
• Session Persistence -- tabs, splits, and working directories auto-saved and restored on restart
• Desktop Notifications -- OSC 9/99/777 support with rate limiting
• Browser Integration -- WKWebView tabs alongside terminal tabs (http/https only, non-persistent storage, popup blocking)
• Scrollback Search -- Cmd+F to search terminal scrollback with match highlighting, Cmd+G/Cmd+Shift+G to navigate matches
• Drag and Drop -- drag files, URLs, or text onto the terminal to insert content (file paths are shell-escaped)
• Smooth Scrolling -- trackpad uses full smooth pixel scrolling via sub-row CALayer transform; notched mouse wheel adds a velocity-based animation for smoother transitions. Togglable in Settings
• Native Scrollbar -- system overlay scrollbar for terminal scrollback
• Cursor Click-to-Move -- click on a prompt line to reposition cursor (requires shell integration)
• Git Source Control -- sidebar Changes view with working changes (staged/unstaged/untracked), commit graph with branch visualization, and inline diff viewer with review comments
• Diff Review Comments -- click the gutter + button to add inline comments to diff lines, then Submit Review to send directly to a Claude Code or Codex terminal tab (demo video)
• AI Agent IPC -- MCP server for communication between AI agent instances (Claude Code, Codex CLI) across tabs and panes (demo video)
• Scriptable Browser -- 25 CLI commands for browser automation (like cmux): snapshot, click, fill, eval, screenshot, wait, get-attribute, get-links, get-inputs, is-visible, hover, scroll. No enable step needed. calyx CLI bundled in the app
• Ghostty config compatibility -- reads ~/.config/ghostty/config (most keys hot-reload on save; see Settings for Calyx-managed keys)
• Compose Overlay -- floating text editor over the terminal for comfortable multiline input (Cmd+Shift+E), useful for writing long commands or AI prompts (demo video)
• Quick Terminal -- system-wide drop-down terminal toggled via global keybind
• Clipboard Confirmation -- prompts before pasting potentially unsafe content (respects Ghostty's clipboard-paste-protection setting)
• Secure Keyboard Entry -- prevents other apps from intercepting keystrokes (toggle via app menu)
• Auto-update -- Sparkle-based updates for direct downloads (Homebrew installs use brew upgrade)

Keyboard Shortcuts

Group Operations (Ctrl+Shift)

| Shortcut | Action | |---|---| | Ctrl+Shift+] | Next group | | Ctrl+Shift+[ | Previous group | | Ctrl+Shift+N | New group | | Ctrl+Shift+W | Close group |

Tab Operations (Cmd)

| Shortcut | Action | |---|---| | Cmd+T | New tab | | Cmd+W | Close tab | | Cmd+1--9 | Switch to tab | | Cmd+Shift+] | Next tab | | Cmd+Shift+[ | Previous tab |

Split Operations

| Shortcut | Action | |---|---| | Cmd+D | Split right | | Cmd+Shift+D | Split down | | Cmd+Option+Arrow | Focus between splits |

Search

| Shortcut | Action | |---|---| | Cmd+F | Find in terminal | | Cmd+G | Next match | | Cmd+Shift+G | Previous match | | Escape | Close search bar |

Notifications

| Shortcut | Action | |---|---| | Cmd+Shift+U | Jump to most recent unread notification tab |

Global

| Shortcut | Action | |---|---| | Cmd+Shift+P | Command palette | | Cmd+Shift+E | Toggle compose overlay |

Compose Overlay

| Shortcut | Action | |---|---| | Enter | Send text to terminal | | Shift+Enter | Insert newline | | Escape | Close overlay |

IPC (Inter-Pane Communication)

AI agent instances (Claude Code, Codex CLI) running in different Calyx tabs or panes can communicate with each other via a built-in MCP server.

1. Open the command palette (Cmd+Shift+P) and run Enable AI Agent IPC
2. Start agents (Claude Code, Codex, or both) in two or more terminal panes
3. Each instance automatically registers as a peer and can send/receive messages

Config is auto-written to ~/.claude.json and ~/.codex/config.toml when the respective tool is installed. Restart running agent instances to pick up the new MCP server.

Available MCP tools: register_peer, list_peers, send_message, broadcast, receive_messages, ack_messages, get_peer_status

To disable, open the command palette and run Disable AI Agent IPC.

Browser Scripting

Agents can programmatically control browser tabs via 25 CLI commands, similar to cmux's browser automation.

1. Open a browser tab and navigate to a page
2. Use calyx browser commands from any terminal tab — no enable step needed

CLI Commands

calyx browser list                         # List all browser tabs
calyx browser snapshot --tab-id <id>       # Accessibility tree with element refs
calyx browser get-text h1 --tab-id <id>    # Get element text
calyx browser click a --tab-id <id>        # Click element
calyx browser fill input --value "text"    # Fill input field
calyx browser eval 'document.title'        # Execute JavaScript
calyx browser screenshot                   # Capture to temp file
calyx browser wait --selector ".loaded"    # Wait for condition
calyx browser get-attribute a href         # Get element attribute
calyx browser get-links                    # List all links (JSON)
calyx browser get-inputs                   # List all form inputs (JSON)
calyx browser is-visible '#sidebar'        # Check element visibility
calyx browser hover '#menu-item'           # Hover over element
calyx browser scroll down --amount 500     # Scroll page/element

The calyx CLI binary is bundled inside Calyx.app/Contents/Resources/bin/. To install it to your PATH, run Install CLI to PATH from the command palette.

The browser server starts automatically with the app and listens on localhost:41840. Connection info is written to ~/.config/calyx/browser.json.

Installation

Homebrew

brew tap yuuichieguchi/calyx
brew install --cask calyx

Manual

1. Download Calyx.zip from the latest release
2. Unzip the file
3. Drag Calyx.app into /Applications

Direct downloads include automatic update checking via Sparkle. Homebrew installs are updated via brew upgrade.

Building from Source

Prerequisites

• macOS 26+ (Tahoe)
• Xcode 26+
• Zig (version matching ghostty's build.zig.zon)
• XcodeGen (brew install xcodegen)

Building

# Clone with submodules
git clone --recursive https://github.com/yuuichieguchi/Calyx.git
cd Calyx

# Build libghostty xcframework
cd ghostty
zig build -Demit-xcframework=true -Dxcframework-target=native
cd ..

# Copy framework
cp -R ghostty/macos/GhosttyKit.xcframework .

# Generate Xcode project & build
xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -project Calyx.xcodeproj -scheme Calyx -configuration Debug build

Architecture

Calyx uses AppKit for window, tab, and focus management with SwiftUI for view rendering, bridged via NSHostingView.

• All ghostty C API calls go through the GhosttyFFI enum
• @MainActor enforced on all UI and model code
• Action dispatch via NotificationCenter

Tech stack: Swift 6.2, AppKit, SwiftUI, libghostty (Metal), XcodeGen

Known Limitations

• Cursor click-to-move on full-width text -- cursor placement may be offset on Japanese/full-width text lines because Ghostty's cursor-click-to-move internally translates clicks into arrow-key steps over terminal cells.
• Calyx-managed config keys -- background-opacity, background-blur, background-opacity-cells, font-codepoint-map, foreground are overridden by Calyx for Glass UI. See Settings > Ghostty Config Compatibility for the full list.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Acknowledgements

Built on libghostty by Mitchell Hashimoto (MIT License).