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TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

tui.studio

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Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#281

Post by keithnz »

nick_ wrote: post #232
sabas123 wrote: post #36

What is the point of having this if code generation is not functional yet? That is the entire point of this app.

TUIs are very in right now. Nostalgia/vintage-computin-aesthetics & guru-gatekeeping around command line savviness are front and centre in the HN-and-adjacent mindshare.

I think it's AI tools, they are often done as tuis, they work well with text, the cli is a text processing god that is easy to extend with cli utilities, and since you find yourself in the terminal much nicer having TUIs quickly available, editor, git client, etc. I love the shift to the terminal as I use it a lot anyways (I'm old), but the missing piece for me is having a good sql tui client that does at least some of what data grip does. So I'm building my own as an experiment into agentic coding something from scratch (which I think what this TUI Studio is also). Surprised how good it is but also surprised how much time it takes to get things polished.

Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#282

Post by peddling-brink »

mpalmer wrote: post #211
majkinetor wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toxic positivity? At your own peril? OMFG. Let's imagine one do. What do you think can actually happen that is so negative? Toxic TUI will hunt you in dreams?

Gatekeeper blocks the app immediately. You'll see either "TUIStudio cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer" or "TUIStudio is damaged and can't be opened" on newer macOS after quarantine flags the binary. To get past it: right-click the .app → Open → Open anyway — or go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → "Open Anyway". A trusting, highly positive person could really be taken advantage of…

Yes, but they are also in alpha, and you can’t actually export any code, so it’s pretty functionally useless.

Neat concept though if it ends up working.

Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#284

Post by luzejian »

The interesting meta-pattern here is how often the tooling around a problem lags the problem itself by 5-10 years. The operational complexity exists, the pain is real, but because it's distributed across many small actors rather than concentrated in a few large ones, the market for structured solutions is slower to develop. That's usually a signal rather than a dead end — it means the first tool that actually fits the workflow, rather than a generic workflow tool, has real leverage.

Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#287

Post by luzejian »

What I find interesting about this is the second-order effect. The obvious first-order impact is well discussed, but the downstream implications for smaller players in the ecosystem usually take 6-12 months to materialize. That lag creates both risk and opportunity — the teams that model it early tend to be better positioned when the shift actually hits.

Re: TUI Studio – visual terminal UI design tool

#290

Post by tartoran »

mikkupikku wrote: post #195
tartoran wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love TUIs but one main reason for that is that they're keyboard centric. If I have to use the mouse it kills it for me, if both work then it's fine. I hope that modern TUI makers keep this in mind. What's great about the keyboard centric is that with a few keystrokes/shortcuts it's very easy to do repeatable work and takes less energy than hunting boxes to click on with the mouse.

TUIs aren't more inherently keyboard driven than well constructed GUIs. You can easily make a keyboard driven GUI that has all the shortcuts you'd add to a TUI. (Just don't let the "UX design experts" near it.)

The problem is that UX experts are attracted to the TUI space and may ruin it for us all with all kind of things that don’t make sense. TUIs are more likely to be keyboard centric our of necessity when mouse isn’t available or used sparsely.
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