pi-ghostty-web

A pi extension that provides web-based terminal access using ghostty-web — Ghostty's battle-tested VT100 parser compiled to WASM.

Open a browser tab (or your phone) and get a full terminal session in pi's working directory.

Installation

pi install npm:pi-ghostty-web

Or from git:

pi install git:github.com/picassio/pi-ghostty-web

Usage

Inside a pi session:

/web            Start the web terminal (default port 7681)
/web 8080       Start on a specific port
/web stop       Stop the server

The status bar shows the LAN URL so you can connect from your phone.

Features

Terminal

• Full terminal emulator in the browser via ghostty-web (WASM)
• Nerd Font support (JetBrains Mono NF) for zsh themes like Powerlevel10k
• Each browser tab gets its own shell session in pi's CWD
• Clean environment — tmux/screen vars are stripped so you can start tmux inside

Session Persistence

• PTY sessions survive WebSocket disconnects (mobile tab backgrounding, network drops)
• 100KB replay buffer restores terminal state on reconnect
• Automatic reconnect with session reattachment — no "connection lost" interruptions
• 5-minute grace period before orphaned PTYs are killed

Mobile

• Touch scrolling with three modes:
  • Mouse tracking on (tmux set -g mouse on): SGR wheel events
  • Alternate screen (tmux copy mode, vim, less): arrow keys
  • Normal shell: scrollback buffer scroll
• On-screen keyboard toolbar with:
  • Special keys: Esc, Tab, Shift+Tab, arrows (◀▼▲▶), PgUp/PgDn, Home/End, Alt+Enter
  • Sticky modifiers: Ctrl, Alt, Shift (tap to activate, double-tap to lock)
  • Modifier + key combos with xterm-style encoding (e.g. Ctrl+◀ = word-left)
• Text selection:
  • Long-press (500ms) to select word, drag to extend character-by-character
  • Double-tap to select word
  • Floating Copy/Paste/All bubble
• Virtual keyboard hides when scrolling, shows on tap
• Viewport resizes when keyboard opens (no content hidden behind keyboard)

tmux Integration

• tmux button in the top bar opens a control panel with:
  • Windows: New, Prev, Next, Rename
  • Panes: H-Split, V-Split, Cycle, Zoom, Kill
  • Session: List, Scroll (copy mode), Detach

Server

• Binds to 0.0.0.0 — accessible from other devices on the LAN
• LAN IP shown in status bar and startup notification
• Port auto-increment if the requested port is in use
• WebSocket heartbeat (ping/pong every 20s) cleans up stale connections
• Static assets cached in memory (ghostty-web JS/WASM served from RAM)
• Cache-Control headers for browser-side caching

How It Works

┌──────────────┐     ┌───────────────────────────┐     ┌──────────────┐
│  Pi TUI      │     │  Pi Process               │     │  Browser     │
│  (terminal)  │     │                           │     │  (phone/     │
│              │     │  pi-ghostty-web extension  │     │   laptop)    │
└──────────────┘     │    ↳ HTTP + WS server     │◄───►│              │
                     │    ↳ PTY sessions          │     │  ghostty-web │
                     └───────────────────────────┘     │  terminal    │
                                                       └──────────────┘

The extension starts an HTTP + WebSocket server inside the Pi process. The browser loads ghostty-web (WASM terminal emulator) and connects via WebSocket. Each connection is bridged to a real PTY running your shell.

Requirements

• Node.js 18+
• A platform supported by @lydell/node-pty (Linux, macOS, Windows)

License

MIT