Today's #1p4floss raindrop is for @willmcgugan . Rich (and click) have made my kludgy cli scripts bearable to me, sometimes pleasurable. #Textual inspires greatly even if I haven't finished anything with it yet. I expect Toad 
will be similarly rejuvenating when it grows out of the tadpole pond.
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I've been working on a process output widget for Toad. It can now handle color and other ANSI escape sequences.
The goal is to be able to embed process output that can handle progress bars and other fancier output from terminals.
Made good progress today. It can handle a colorful mandlebrot set! Once I talked the LLM in to it.
WDYT?
Guess who discovered Python "textual" TUI framework today! 
https://textual.textualize.io/
I tried creating an interactive mode for freedom-maker.
$ python3 -m freedom-maker --interactive
is the command to trigger it.
There's even a Select All feature. One trigger to do all the new stable builds once Debian 13 is out this month!
Note: This is not in the package yet, it's just an experiment.
More details in each screenshot below.
I think I finally coerced Textual into making this dashboard grid reactive.
It resizes itself, changes the number of columns, is scrollable...
It sounds easy but it isn't? Textual Grids are really meant to just fill the entire space as layout elements, and TCSS doesn't have many reactive things, so I just kind of have an `on_resize` hook in the python code that dynamically changes the values, but hey it works!
My daughter has been working on flame graph visualizations in the terminal using #textual for perf. Picture below and link to the patch series:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250725082425.20999-1-irogers@google.com/
Got the initial dice rolling implementation in the #Pathfinder2E character sheet. Not the prettiest, but it works pretty damned well. `[Ctrl] + [D]` to open the dialog window, `[Esc]` to close, and `[Enter]` rolls the dice.
Just got Mchael Driscoll's (@driscollis) new book "Creating TUI applications with Textual and Python".
Excited to get started. I think I'm going to try to make some fake interfaces, like the ones seen in John Wick or Fantastic 4.
- https://willmcgugan.github.io/announcing-toad/ (2025-07-23, Announcing Toad - a universal UI for agentic coding in the terminal, by https://willmcgugan.github.io/, @willmcgugan)
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I’m a little salty that neither Anthropic nor Google reached out to me before they released their terminal-based AI coding agents.
You see until recently I was the CEO of Textualize, a startup promoting rich applications for the terminal. Textualize didn’t make it as a company, but I take heart that we built something amazing. There is now a thriving community of folk building TUIs that I am still a part of.
So you will understand why when I finally got round to checking out Claude code and Gemini CLI, I was more interested in the terminal interface than the AI magic it was performing. And I was not impressed. Both projects suffer from jank and other glitches inherent to terminals that Textualize solved years ago.
....
I’m currently taking a year’s sabbatical. When Textualize wrapped up I genuinely thought I was sick of coding, and I would never gain be able to find joy in building things. I’m happy to be wrong about that. I still enjoy coding, and Toad feels like the perfect hobby project for my very particular set of skills. Something I can build while continuing to focus on my physical and mental health (running a startup is taxing).
So I am going to build it.
I am building it.
Here’s a quick video of Toad in its current state: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKsCS54xduo
What I have in mind is a universal front-end for AI in the terminal. This includes both AI chat-bots and agentic coding. The architecture I alluded to earlier is that the front-end built with Python and Textual connects to a back-end subprocess. The back-end handles the interactions with the LLM and performs any agentic coding, while the front-end provides the user interface. The two sides communicate with each other by sending and receiving JSON over stdout and stdin.
...
Toad isn’t quite ready for a public release. It remains a tadpole for now, incubating in a private repository. But you know I’m all about FOSS, and when its ready for a public beta I will release Toad under an Open Source license.
With a bit of luck, this sabbatical needn’t eat in to my retirement fund too much. If it goes well, it may even become my full-time gig.
I will shortly invite a few tech friends and collaborators to the project. These things can’t be the work of a single individual and I am going to need feedback as I work. If you would like to be a part of that, then feel free to reach out. But please note, I would like to prioritize folk in the Open Source community who have potentially related projects.
For everyone else, I will be posting updates regularly here and on my socials (link at the bottom of the page). Expect screenshots, videos, and long form articles. Please be patient—you will be agentic toading before too long.
Looking for markdown streaming? : https://willmcgugan.github.io/streaming-markdown/ (Efficient streaming of Markdown in the terminal)
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Will McGugan · Announcing Toad - a universal UI for agentic coding in the terminalI’m a little salty that neither Anthropic nor Google reached out to me before they released their terminal-based AI coding agents.
I've been working on streaming Markdown documents in #Textual, which is a challenge to be sure!
It's working remarkably well now, and very performant. Even zooming out to a ridiculous extent as you can see in the video.
Also made the tables prettier, and in the process enabled text selection within the tables.
Continued thread
Added a little more polish...
The day before treason day (jk) is a terrible time to announce anything, so consider this a teaser.
I've spend the last two afternoons hacking on an experimental terminal UI for a AI coding agent called Toad
Will be posting more soon. Follow me if you aren't already!
Here's a video of it in action:
Note that this is a real app, but the AI interaction are mocked. WDYT? Should I make this real?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuVRs7e1BqM&ab_channel=WillMcGugan
Oh no my bullshit is getting slicker by the minute, this is terrifying and I can't stop.
Today's keeping busy task... *drum roll please*
Save time with #Textual containers.
Textual DocumentationTextual - Save time with Textual containersTextual is a TUI framework for Python, inspired by modern web development.
Oh no, for some reason I started making a stupid modal TUI for my nice little tool that does reporting on updates, and now I can't stop.
DO I EVEN NEED THIS AT THIS POINT? I have a super nice interactive prompt that does pretty tables and data display, but I can't stop.
Textual is actually a really quick way to make interactive UIs
A few weeks ago I did a podcast with Software Engineering Radio.
Here it is...
I haven't listened to it, as I get creeped out by my own voice. 
https://se-radio.net/2025/05/se-radio-669-will-mcgugan-on-text-based-user-interfaces/
se-radio.netSE Radio 669: Will McGugan on Text-Based User Interfaces – Software Engineering Radio
I've just released v0.8.0 of Braindrop, my #raindrop #bookmarking application for the #terminal. This version adds the ability to rebind application commands.
Next I should do some docs so it's obvious how.
GitHubGitHub - davep/braindrop: A terminal-based client for raindrop.ioA terminal-based client for raindrop.io. Contribute to davep/braindrop development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHubGitHub - davep/hike: A Markdown browser for the terminalA Markdown browser for the terminal. Contribute to davep/hike development by creating an account on GitHub.
Trying #Textual (https://textual.textualize.io/) for the first time for some work stuff. It seems fun!
Textual DocumentationTextual - HomeTextual is a TUI framework for Python, inspired by modern web development.