The terminal engine

Coding agents, test runners, and build logs produce a lot of fast terminal output. If rendering that output blocks the UI thread, every pane stutters at once. Muxie’s default engine is built to avoid exactly that.

The default: Ghostty in WebAssembly

By default Muxie renders terminals with Ghostty’s terminal core compiled to WebAssembly, running on a worker off the main thread (this engine is labelled worktty internally). Parsing terminal output and painting the grid happen away from the UI thread, so a pane spewing output doesn’t freeze the rest of the workspace.

This engine includes the terminal features you’d expect — copy mode, clickable links and file paths, bell behavior, and OSC 52 clipboard handling — and it’s used consistently across local, SSH, and sprites.dev sessions.

The alternative: xterm.js

Muxie also bundles the mature xterm.js engine. You can switch to it under Settings → Terminal (“Use xterm.js”). It’s a good fallback if you hit a rendering edge case, and it currently owns a couple of features the Ghostty engine is still catching up on (for example, its in-terminal search panel).

The engine choice applies to new tabs, so open a fresh pane after switching.

Terminal features

Regardless of engine, you get:

• Copy mode (Ctrl+Shift+M) — vi-style keyboard selection (hjkl, word and line motions, / search) with yank to the clipboard.
• Clickable links and file paths — hover highlights them; Ctrl+click opens a file in a side pane (git-worktree aware). Controlled by openFilesInSplit.
• OSC 52 clipboard — programs (including remote ones) can copy to your local clipboard.
• Color schemes — follow the app theme, pick from hundreds of bundled presets, or import your own. See Customize the terminal.
• Font and ligatures — choose any system font (monospace by default) and toggle programming-font ligatures.
• Bell — none, a visual flash, or a sound.

Related

• Customize the terminal — themes, fonts, schemes.
• Settings reference — every terminal option.