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ghostty-org
ghostty
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ghostty-org / ghostty

ghostty

đŸ‘» Ghostty is a fast, feature-rich, and cross-platform terminal emulator that uses platform-native UI and GPU acceleration.

Command LineGames & EmulationSystems & Infrastructure
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
110Distinct people
128Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
64KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

đŸ‘» Ghostty is a fast, feature-rich, and cross-platform terminal emulator that uses platform-native UI and GPU acceleration.

GitHub

Where it is used

  • Ghostty Terminal — Ghostty Terminal uses Ghostty’s WebAssembly terminal engine to power the in-editor terminal. It renders the terminal in a VS Code Webview and hooks to a real shell process. Source
  • Ghost Town — Ghost Town uses Ghostty’s VT100 parser, compiled to WebAssembly, to power its web-based terminal emulator. This provides the terminal parsing engine in the browser. Source

What people are saying

I'm an AI critic, but I use AI every day. In fact, I am an AI researcher and work on making models more capable and powerful (probably where a lot of my criticism stems from).


godelski used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 8:03:49 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month128 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2024-12-26 20:41:06 UTC to 2026-10-28 03:23:47 UTC.

051015202024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 14 mentions; 1 submissions, 13 commentsDec 20242025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 3 submissions, 5 comments2025-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 2 submissions, 1 comments2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 4 submissions, 6 comments2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 13 mentions; 0 submissions, 13 comments2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 commentsNov 20252025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 19 mentions; 4 submissions, 15 comments2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 4 submissions, 8 comments2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 1 submissions, 11 comments2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 1 submissions, 6 commentsOct 2026

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Dec 20242024-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC14113
Jan 20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-02-01 00:00:00 UTC835
Feb 20252025-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-03-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Mar 20252025-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Apr 20252025-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC211
May 20252025-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Jun 20252025-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC321
Jul 20252025-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20252025-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC1046
Sep 20252025-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC13013
Oct 20252025-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC707
Nov 20252025-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC202
Dec 20252025-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
Jan 20262026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC19415
Feb 20262026-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC1248
Mar 20262026-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC12111
Apr 20262026-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC101
May 20262026-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC312
Jun 20262026-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC211
Jul 20262026-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC303
Aug 20262026-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC312
Sep 20262026-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Oct 20262026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-11-01 00:00:00 UTC716

What Hacker News says

19 sources
pella·Jan 16, 2026
Check Ghostty "CONTRIBUTING.md#ai-assistance-notice" "The Ghostty project allows AI-assisted code contributions, which must be properly disclosed in the pull request." https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/blob/main/CONTRIBUTIN... Mitchell Hashimoto (2025-12-30): "Slop drives me crazy and it feels like 95+% of bug reports, but man, AI code analysis is getting really good. There are users out there reporting bugs that don't know ANYTHING about our stack, but are great AI drivers and producing some high quality issue reports. This person (linked below) was experiencing Ghostty crashes and took it upon themselves to use AI to write a python script that can decode our crash files, match them up with our dsym files, and analyze the codebase for attempting to find the root cause, and extracted that into an Agent Skill. They then came into
Read the rest
Discord, warned us they don't know Zig at all, don't know macOS dev at all, don't know terminals at all, and that they used AI, but that they thought critically about the issues and believed they were real and asked if we'd accept them. I took a look at one, was impressed, and said send them all. This fixed 4 real crashing cases that I was able to manually verify and write a fix for from someone who -- on paper -- had no fucking clue what they were talking about. And yet, they drove an AI with expert skill. I want to call out that in addition to driving AI with expert skill, they navigated the terrain with expert skill as well. They didn't just toss slop up on our repo. They came to Discord as a human, reached out as a human, and talked to other humans about what they've done. They were careful and thoughtful about the process. People like this give me hope for what is possible. But it really, really depends on high quality people like this. Most today -- to continue the analogy -- are unfortunately driving like a teenager who has only driven toy go-karts. Examples: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions?discussio... " ( https://x.com/mitchellh/status/2006114026191769924 )
In Tldraw pauses external contributions due to AI slop
bastawhiz·Jan 11, 2026
I didn't downvote, but I suspect it's an easy answer: the fix was like four lines. At the end of the day, #1 and #3 both probably add a fairly significant amount of code and complexity that it's not clear to me adds robustness or clarity. From the fix: ``` // If our first node has non-standard memory size, we can't reuse // it. This is because our initBuf below would change the underlying // memory length which would break our memory free outside the pool. // It is easiest in this case to prune the node. ``` https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/commit/17da13840dc71b... #3, it seems, would require making a broader change. The size effectively is immutable now (assuming I'm understanding your comment correctly): non-standard pages never change size, they get discarded without trying to change their size. #2 is interesting, but I think it
Read the rest
won't work because the implementation of MemoryPool doesn't seem like it would make it easy to test ownership: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/blob/17da13840dc71ba3... You'd have to make some changes to be able to check the arena buffers, and that check would be far slower than the simple comparison.
In Finding and fixing Ghostty's largest memory leak
masklinn·Jan 10, 2026
Not really? In your link TFAA was saying they were convinced an issue existed but the number of impacted users was limited, no maintainer experienced the issue, and they had no reproducer. As of yesterday TFAA still had no working reproducer: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/9962#disc... In the meantime they apparently got one (edit: per their sibling comment they got it yesterday evening) and were finally able to figure out the issue. edit: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/10244 is where it was cracked.
In Finding and fixing Ghostty's largest memory leak
eapotapov·Jan 2, 2026
For those who have the issue. I reported the issue in discussions some time ago, but had no reaction/response. I was able to reproduce the leak consistently. Finally I've got all the reports done by me, Ghostty sources and Claude Code and tried to fix it. For the first couple of weeks there were no leaks at all, now it started again but only 1/10 of the times it was before. https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/9786 There are some logs and a Claude Code review md file that might be useful. Hope it will help someone investigate further.
In Why users cannot create Issues directly
pella·Jan 2, 2026
2025-12-30 https://x.com/mitchellh/status/2006114026191769924 "Slop drives me crazy and it feels like 95+% of bug reports, but man, AI code analysis is getting really good. There are users out there reporting bugs that don't know ANYTHING about our stack, but are great AI drivers and producing some high quality issue reports. This person (linked below) was experiencing Ghostty crashes and took it upon themselves to use AI to write a python script that can decode our crash files, match them up with our dsym files, and analyze the codebase for attempting to find the root cause, and extracted that into an Agent Skill. They then came into Discord, warned us they don't know Zig at all, don't know macOS dev at all, don't know terminals at all, and that they used AI, but that they thought critically about the issues and believed they were real
Read the rest
and asked if we'd accept them. I took a look at one, was impressed, and said send them all. This fixed 4 real crashing cases that I was able to manually verify and write a fix for from someone who -- on paper -- had no fucking clue what they were talking about. And yet, they drove an AI with expert skill. I want to call out that in addition to driving AI with expert skill, they navigated the terrain with expert skill as well. They didn't just toss slop up on our repo. They came to Discord as a human, reached out as a human, and talked to other humans about what they've done. They were careful and thoughtful about the process. People like this give me hope for what is possible. But it really, really depends on high quality people like this. Most today -- to continue the analogy -- are unfortunately driving like a teenager who has only driven toy go-karts." "Examples: https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions?discussio... "
In Why users cannot create Issues directly

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