Shitty
fast terminal. Memory-unsafe and faster than yours
Get picks like this daily. Today's launch numbers, the top launches, AI and tech news, and a daily opportunity pick, straight to your inbox.
Want to reach these readers? Sponsor an issue.
HN · launched Aug 2, 2026 · 173 upvotes (top 3%) · 0 views
Niche: terminal emulators and utilities · 106 launches, 1 in the last 7 days ▼ -88% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 106 launches in terminal emulators and utilities →
Could you build this?
No Writing a high-performance terminal emulator from scratch requires deep systems programming, low-level OS PTY handling, custom VT/ANSI escape parsers, and GPU rendering pipelines.
What it would actually take: The architecture involves a native C/Rust/C++ application managing POSIX PTY/conpty processes, an ultra-fast VT100/xterm state machine parser, and GPU-accelerated glyph caching and rendering via Metal/Vulkan/OpenGL. The hard part is achieving raw throughput and low latency while managing concurrent ring buffers, font shaping (HarfBuzz/FreeType), and memory-level micro-optimizations. This requires specialized systems engineering and low-level graphics expertise.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Konsole, Kitty terminal emulator
Concerns raised: High VRAM usage (75MB) compared to non-GPU-accelerated alternatives, GPL license restrictions and philosophical disagreements, Missing kitty graphics protocol implementation, Description omits significant modern terminal interface features
Feature requests: Implement kitty graphics protocol, Reduce VRAM consumption for GPU acceleration
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 1254 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #49 of 1255 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 275 days after the earliest competitor.
- Rustwright: Rewrite of Playwright in rust that uses 70% less memory (and is 2.55x faster) · yc · 2026-07-15 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- LiteParse v2, now in Rust 100x faster · hn · 2026-05-28 · 15 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- system-speed-booster · github · 2026-11-10 · 102 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- I audited 500 K8s pods. Java wastes ~48% RAM, Go ~18% · hn · 2025-12-13 · 36 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Z-Jail · hn · 2026-07-01 · 23 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- Neptune, a free and open-source terminal built in Rust · hn · 2026-10-07 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- I Forked MinIO Object Storage and Made It Run Faster · hn · 2026-07-30 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- buildx_gc · github · 2026-09-14 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.49
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.