Protocol::HTTY

protocol-htty defines a small, terminal-safe framing layer for carrying an opaque byte stream over TTY side channels.

Traditional terminal user interfaces are useful, but they are also a poor fit for many modern interactions. They are constrained by character-cell rendering, limited layout semantics, awkward input models, and a presentation layer that was never designed for rich documents or structured application state.

In practice, this means TUIs often force applications into compromises: text-heavy layouts, ad-hoc protocols, and bespoke escape-sequence behavior that is hard to standardise across runtimes and terminals.

HTTY exists to keep the portability and deployment advantages of terminal workflows while avoiding the need to build an entire application model out of terminal control codes. Instead of asking the terminal stream itself to represent higher-level UI state, HTTY provides a small framing layer that can carry a normal plaintext HTTP/2 connection alongside terminal traffic, enabling applications to attach browser surfaces to a normal terminal session over HTTY.

HTTY does not model application requests, regions, or resources. It transports the two directions of a single plaintext HTTP/2 (h2c) connection over terminal-safe chunks without introducing a second session protocol.

Each chunk is encoded as a DCS sequence:

ESC P HTTY;1;BASE64_CHUNK ESC \

The framing layer intentionally stays small so it can be reimplemented in other runtimes.

Please see the project documentation for more details.

• Getting Started - This guide explains how to get started with protocol-htty for terminal-safe HTTP/2 byte stream transport.

• HTTY Specification - This document specifies HTTY as a terminal-safe framing layer for carrying a plaintext HTTP/2 (h2c) byte stream over terminal side channels.

Please see the project releases for all releases.

We welcome contributions to this project.

1. Fork it.
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature).
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature').
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature).
5. Create new Pull Request.

To run the test suite:

bundle exec sus

To make a new release:

bundle exec bake gem:release:patch # or minor or major

In order to protect users of this project, we require all contributors to comply with the Developer Certificate of Origin. This ensures that all contributions are properly licensed and attributed.

This project is best served by a collaborative and respectful environment. Treat each other professionally, respect differing viewpoints, and engage constructively. Harassment, discrimination, or harmful behavior is not tolerated. Communicate clearly, listen actively, and support one another. If any issues arise, please inform the project maintainers.