Ask HN: Do you still build terminal tools for fun?

7 points by FerkiHN 1y ago ↗ HN

Lately I’ve been exploring how far we can still push the terminal — both for fun and for practical tools.

I recently ended up writing a small utility that displays images inside the terminal using only ANSI color blocks. It’s not fancy, but it made me realize how flexible the terminal still is — even without GUI libraries or modern frameworks.

Just wondering: do others here still build CLI or terminal-based tools for side projects, retro use cases, or just for fun?

Would love to hear your favorite hacks or experiments.

6 comments of 9

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FerkiHN 1y ago ↗

Here's the image viewer I mentioned — it’s a single binary, written in raw C with no dependencies other than SDL2.

Works on Linux, Windows, Termux etc. Demo folder shows some real renders.

GitHub: https://github.com/Ferki-git-creator/phono-in-terminal-image...

asddfgg55 1y ago ↗

Cool, this is the first time I've seen such a rendering program, I didn't even know that such a high-quality image could be in the terminal.

jlundberg 1y ago ↗

Yes, our whole customer support is CLI based. We probably have more than 200+ custom internal tools now.

Many tools use simple coloring, like this (in Python):

print( red( ”Warning: xyz” ) )

jjgreen 1y ago ↗

That's about the 10th time you've posted this, please give it a rest.

msgodel 1y ago ↗

Unless you need actual bitmapped graphics the VTE is probably the best and most portable graphics API available currently.

gregjor 1y ago ↗

Not for fun, but I do build CLI tools for development and production use.