A few months ago I started building terminaltui — a TypeScript framework for interactive terminal apps. The pitch is "Next.js for the terminal": write a pages/ directory of TS files, get a fully navigable TUI with file-based routing, components, themes, and SSH hosting. It just hit v1.8.1 on npm with 2,142 passing tests. You can try it in zero seconds: npx terminaltui try Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode That opens a 5-page guided tour of the framework — no install, no signup. This post is the technical writeup: how the file-based router works, the layout engine, and the SSH hosting bit. If you've used Ink (React for the terminal), terminaltui is in the same neighborhood but a step further — it ships routing, layout, and themes as defaults instead of "bring your own React patterns." The file-based router A terminaltui project is just two things: config.ts and pages/ .…