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Meetings, but make them monospace and mildly chaotic.

npm License: MIT

Web → termeet.app

Someone decided video calls needed more grit, fewer tabs, and at least 300% more #. Termeet is what fell out: your camera becomes a living mosaic of @ and #, your voice still gets through, and the whole thing runs where serious tools belong — the terminal (or the browser, if you prefer pixels with a glow-up).

No slick UI chrome. No “you’re on mute” in corporate pastel. Just you, your peers, and a grid of tiny ASCII faces doing their honest best.

  ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │  @@@@@@@@   %%%%%%%%   ########                      │
  │  @@    @@   %%    %%   ##    ##   Participants: 3    │
  │  @ o  o @   % o  o %   # o  o #   Room: a7f3x       │
  │  @  __  @   %  __  %   #  __  #                      │
  │  @@@@@@@@   %%%%%%%%   ########   [M]ute  [V]ideo   │
  │                                   [T]chat [Q]uit    │
  │  > hey, can everyone see my screen?                  │
  │  > looks great in ASCII!                             │
  └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The pitch

• See each other — as ASCII, in real time. It is way more expressive than it has any right to be.
• Hear each other — when ffmpeg and your OS agree to cooperate; bring ffplay if you want sound out of your speakers.
• Talk in text — side chat for links, jokes, and the ancient “can you hear me?” incantation.
• Rooms with codes — spin up a space, share the id, vanish when you are done.

There’s also a web client at termeet.app — same rooms, same vibe, friendlier for guests who don’t live in tmux. Room links look like https://termeet.app/r/<room-id> so you can reload or share a meeting.

Jump in (CLI)

No install commitment issues? Use npx:

npx termeet

Want it always available:

npm install -g termeet
termeet

Got a room code? Skip the lobby:

termeet --room <room-id>

By default the CLI talks to the shared signal behind termeet.app (wss://termeet.app/ws). Self-hosting? Point the client at your own server with TERMEET_WS_URL, or TERMEET_HOST / TERMEET_PORT for a plain ws:// box on your network.

The published npm package ships a standalone binary (Bun + bundled ffmpeg where we can). Optional ffplay is on you if your OS does not bundle it — full ffmpeg installs usually include it.

Hack on this repo

Grab Bun (one-liner on their site), ffmpeg from your package manager, and optionally ffplay if you care about hearing remote audio.

bun install
bun run start    # server + terminal client, together
# or: bun run server   and   bun run dev   in two terminals

macOS: give your terminal app Camera and Microphone in System Settings → Privacy & Security, or you’ll stare at “No signal” forever.

Keys (terminal client)

| Key | What it does | | -------- | ------------------------------------ | | M | Mute / unmute | | V | Camera on / off | | T | Chat panel | | I | Copy room id | | Tab | Hop between fields (lobby) | | Esc | Back out / unfocus chat | | Q | Leave room (meeting) or quit (lobby) | | Ctrl+Q | Quit the app from a meeting | | P | Clear pinned participant |

Under the hood (short version)

Camera frames take a scenic route through ffmpeg, get turned into something your font can love, and ride WebSockets to everyone else. Audio tags along as PCM when the stars align. The terminal UI is OpenTUI — React in the place you’d least expect.

If you are packaging, publishing, or building the CLI for every platform, see bun run build:cli / bun run build:cli:all, env vars like FFMPEG_PATH, and the workflow in .github/workflows/publish-packages.yml. The rest is ordinary TypeScript under src/ — server, client, and shared protocol living in one tree.

License

MIT — use it, break it, fork it, turn your standup into ASCII theatre.