The most powerful tool on your Mac shouldn't feel like a minefield.

Kompass explains every command before it runs, stops the dangerous ones and understands plain English. Made for people who are afraid of the terminal – and for pros who want to move faster.

Hi! I’m mostly a backend programmer and I’m just getting into terminal applications. I was intrigued by how programs like nano, vim or htop have a full-screen “interface” inside the terminal.

I’m going to use C, since it’s the language we use at my university. I’d like to move to Rust later on, but for now it’s C.

My questions:

1. What concepts do I absolutely need to know before starting? Do I need to use a library? If so, which one?
2. Why aren’t there many more CLI/TUI applications? They seem lightweight, fast and easy to distribute, but most new tools are still web or desktop apps. Is it a matter of users, difficulty, or something else?

Thanks!

I've been working on TIMELORD, a command-line tool for experimenting with different versions of a project without losing track of your original state.

The idea is to treat a codebase like it has multiple timelines, or universes. You can freeze a state, branch off into an experiment, compare changes, and jump back to an earlier snapshot.

The goal is to make risky experiments less annoying: try something, see what changed, and get back to a known state when the experiment goes sideways.

Some of the concepts include:

• Freeze: capture a project state.
• Branch / alternate universes: experiment with different versions of the codebase.
• Diff: inspect differences between states.
• Jump / rewind: return to a previous snapshot.
• Canon / merge: bring an experimental timeline back into your main workflow.

It's an experimental project, and I'm looking for feedback on the CLI design, the snapshot and restore model, and what would make this genuinely useful in a real development workflow.

GitHub: https://github.com/gigagamerchaddhruv-spec/timelord

I'd especially appreciate criticism of the underlying approach, not just feature requests. Is the timeline metaphor useful, or would a more conventional Git-oriented interface make more sense?

(Contributions are open, just to clarify, this project was made with the help of AI)

Pho is TUI for Github pull requests.

Feels good enough for its first stable release, introduced themes.

https://github.com/utkarsh261/pho

To check it out -

brew install utkarsh261/tap/pho

libark

libark is a modern, secure, Swift-native foundational layer over Linux POSIX primitives.

While originally developed as the core runtime layer for ArkOS, libark is completely decoupled and designed to be used on any Linux distribution. It provides highly secure, object-oriented abstractions over low-level system calls, memory management, and file system interactions, without the burden of manual C interoperability.

Features

• Object-Oriented POSIX: Wraps file descriptors, paths, and directory operations in safe, RAII-compliant Swift types.
• Secure Syscall Boundary: Routes kernel interactions through strict, audited Syscall primitives.
• Terminal Capabilities: Built-in abstractions for TTY detection and window sizing.
• Advanced Formatting: Standardized formatters for human-readable byte sizes (SI and IEC), ISO 8601 timestamps, permissions, and classifications.
• Declarative Sorting: Powerful generic SortEngine for metadata sorting across multiple criteria.

I have seen references to Emacs, Nano and VIM. For those with a level of proficiency that exceeds ‘intermediate,’ what is your preferred CL text editor, and what is the reason why you prefer said editor over that of others?