We ain't afraid of no Ghostty! (Interview)

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

Mitchell Hashimoto joins the show to discuss Ghostty, the newest terminal in town. Mitchell co-founded HashiCorp, took it all the way to IPO, exited in 2023—and now he’s working on a terminal emulator called Ghostty. Ghostty is set to 1.0 this month, so we sat down to talk through all the details.

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Featuring:

• Mitchell Hashimoto – Website, GitHub, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• First episode with Mitchell Hashimoto! Changelog Interviews #72: Vagrant and virtualized environments
• Ghostty 1.0 is Coming and more at Ghostty 👻.
• Zig - Zig is a general-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaining robust, optimal and reusable software.
• Warp
• Changelog & Friends #53: There’s a TUI for that
• Changelog Interviews #511: The terminal as a platform
• Changelog Interviews #555: Back to the terminal of the future
• Michael Flarup runs Pixel Resort and created the Ghostty icon

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

บท

1. This week on The Changelog (00:00:00)

2. Sponsor: Fly.io (00:00:57)

https://fly.io/

3. Start the show! (00:03:43)

4. Let's talk Ghostty (00:04:05)

5. What is Ghostty? (00:05:19)

6. Terminals are like web browsers (00:07:32)

7. Where did you start? (00:09:34)

8. What does fast mean? (00:11:35)

9. How do you make it fast? (00:12:53)

10. Terminal as a platform (00:14:34)

11. Ghostty passed Jerod's sniff test (00:18:52)

12. Should tmux be baked in? (00:19:15)

13. libghostty and Ghostty app (00:22:03)

14. The importance of Windows support (00:23:29)

15. The ambitions of Ghostty (00:25:30)

16. Impact, but not as a business (00:27:32)

17. Sponsor: Eight Sleep (00:29:41)

https://www.eightsleep.com/changelog

18. Sponsor: Wix Studio (00:31:59)

https://www.wix.com/studio

19. The Discord is active (00:32:52)

20. Who's behind Ghostty? (00:37:58)

21. How long have you been working on this? (00:39:37)

22. Post HashiCorp hobbies and stuff (00:40:07)

23. Nerd snipe BINGO (Zig) (00:43:52)

24. Symbiosis with Zig (00:47:17)

25. Any large technical problems? (00:49:29)

26. Why is font rendering hard? (00:50:55)

27. Packaging a favorite font? (00:54:24)

28. Let's talk config (00:57:13)

29. Comparing to Warp's prompt (01:02:43)

30. Sponsor: Retool (01:11:00)

https://retool.com/changelog

31. Should Mitchell write a shell too? (01:15:30)

32. What's DHH's terminal? (01:18:18)

33. When does Ghostty 1.0 drop? (01:19:56)

34. App icon - the winking ghost (01:21:29)

35. Designed by Michael Flarup (01:23:09)

36. How much SwiftUI is in here? (01:24:21)

37. Major 1.0 blockers? (01:25:24)

38. Good question on X from Mark J (01:28:36)

39. Happy with Terminal.app? (01:31:07)

40. Visor mode!! (01:32:12)

41. Terminal inspector (01:35:11)

42. Wrapping up (01:37:13)

43. Go to ghostty.org (01:37:54)

https://ghostty.org

44. Closing thoughts and stuff (01:39:09)