Ratty: A terminal emulator with inline 3D graphics

Posted by orhunp@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 55 comments

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY9AX5j-osY
GitHub: https://github.com/orhun/ratty

In Ratty:

your terminal cursor is a spinning rat,
your whole terminal is a 3D canvas,
you can insert 3D models and sprites into the terminal.

Try it out: https://ratty-term.org/

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Quietus87@reddit

It looks like some schizophrenic indie game from Steam. Pure nightmare fuel. Well done!

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SheriffBartholomew@reddit

The TempleOS creator was certainly schizophrenic.

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New-Conversation1235@reddit

and the folks of color at the CIA got him with their freight trains. rest in peace king terry.....

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NatiRivers@reddit

Just some context, in case anyone wants it: the project heavily uses AI-generated code.

"How much AI was involved in this work?"

See my stance on AI-assisted programming in this blog post.

To put it briefly: it was involved, but definitely not in a way that I would consider "sloppy".

From the intro blog

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While it is a little dishonest, I can't blame him. A lot of people hear that something is made with AI and just completely lose interest and bash a project without giving it the time of day, completely ignoring any real merits it may have because it's "slop".

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Coffee_Ops@reddit

I think this is the sort of insanity that AI was made for, just like that astrology-based CPU scheduler.

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New_Alps_5655@reddit

"Kitty image protocol" Is that just sixel then or what?

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khsh01@reddit

How long till we get the updated version of TempleOS, SecularOS?

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nuudul2@reddit

peak

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lmarcantonio@reddit

The real question is why. Cat toy maybe?

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UwU_is_my_life@reddit

well we had 2d graphics in terminal with kitty, now we get 3d with ratty

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lmarcantonio@reddit

Now we just need a VR terminal, then

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UwU_is_my_life@reddit

i guess so

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stgiga@reddit

I made a format that's like DolDoc on steroids

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arthank-chroot@reddit

Just. Why? This looks like I went to Amsterdam and had a fun night talking to a lamp post

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JockstrapCummies@reddit

A very worthy shrine to Terry's legacy! Absolutely essential to the 2026 modern terminal workflow.

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doctortrento@reddit

I like elephants and God likes elephants

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spezisdumb42069@reddit

You know what's better than realism? How about an elephant with blue eyes!

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orhunp@reddit (OP)

I like rats and God likes rats

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s0litar1us@reddit

I can't think of a use case for it beyond porting doom yet another way, and porting TempleOS stuff to Linux (as seen in the screenshot.)

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Junior_Common_9644@reddit

I love it. I hope he enhances a markdown editor with ratty abilities. :)

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VimFleed@reddit

I'm not a programmer, so everything I say maybe (and probably is) BS, but can't you turn the 3d rendering engine into a protocol? I know it sounds crazy but hear me out.

Creating a full fledged terminal is an enormous task, look at Ghostty and Kitty. The chances/ amount of work you need to pour into this to be feature complete or reach feature pairty is massive, and unless you want Ratty to be a tech demo you need to achieve the feature pairty.

But, if you turn it into a protocol/patch/pr that works with Kitty and Ghostty, it'll gain much bigger audience.

Please forgive my ignorance, I'm pretty sure my suggestion is just a word salad and not applicable or requires much more work than I phrased it, but on the off chance that what I said is s applicable, please consider it.

I forgot to say it looks amazing.

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UnLeashDemon@reddit

You're a mad lad. Incredible.

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orhunp@reddit (OP)

thank you!

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countjj@reddit

I just installed it and I love it, I’m trying to set up my custom cursor but when I put in the absolute file path in toml, it just renders a default cube. What directory does it load cursor models from?

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orhunp@reddit (OP)

Ah, please file a bug report!
I think it should load it from the directory you run the terminal from. It should use the absolute path to the configuration file instead. You can see the respective logs if you run ratty from another terminal.

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Oflameo@reddit

I want to try it.

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xui_nya@reddit

Bruh

Dude I just saw you today but I love you.

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2rad0@reddit

Woah woah woah woah woah, I'm noticing here the resolution is higher than 640x480, WHAT IS THIS DEMONIC WITCHCRAFT!?

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Delta-9-@reddit

A solution in search of a problem?

Although, I could imagine someone who does a lot of 3D graphics work could benefit from an ls3d command that lists all models in the current directory alongside miniature sprites of the model in each file, or something similar to kitty's icat tool. That assumes each model is in a format ratty understands—which, I'd guess, is anything Bevy understands?

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aloobhujiyaay@reddit

Even if many people never need inline 3D in terminals, projects like this often push forward rendering techniques and architectural ideas that benefit terminal tooling more broadly

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QuickSilver010@reddit

Just when I thought kitty was the forefront of graphics in the terminal....

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seanprefect@reddit

To quote the poet and scholar Mal Reynolds , I see how they did it I’m just not so sure on the why.

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Lando_Calrissian@reddit

If Cruelty Squad was an terminal.

It's wonderful.

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orhunp@reddit (OP)

thanks! The startup performance is alright but the runtime might use a bit more resources. e.g. I saw 300mb of RAM while testing it

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orhunp@reddit (OP)

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