Choose an SDK

An SDK speaks hotty for your program. It asks the terminal whether it is a host, builds the commands that show and change surfaces, and reads the events that come back. Every SDK follows the same design: the same names, the same defaults, and the same conformance vectors. So what you learn in one carries over to the others.

SDK	for	what it has
Go	command-line tools, full-screen programs, their tests	the most: Bubble Tea, charts, forms, fields in cells, a host for tests
TypeScript	Node and Bun programs	the protocol and a terminal to use it in
Lua	Neovim plugins, plx scripts	the protocol, and surfaces anchored to a buffer or a tool
Python	trying hotty out, the examples in this repository	the protocol, in one file with no dependencies

Each speaks hotty 0.4 and no other version. A program written with one draws in cells wherever the terminal is not a host of 0.4.

Go

hotty-go has the most. Next to the protocol it has a package for each kind of program:

hottyterm, for a command that prints a card, asks a question or streams a chart, and leaves it in the scrollback;
hottytea, for a full-screen Bubble Tea program, keeping its surfaces in place as its frame changes;
hottyedit, for a text field drawn in cells that edits as a surface's does;
hottytest, a host that runs inside go test, so a program's tests need no terminal.

go get github.com/neuroplastio/hotty-go github.com/neuroplastio/hotty-go/hottyterm

Start with the Go quick start.

TypeScript

hotty-ts is the SDK for Node and Bun: the protocol, and a terminal that detects the host, prints documents and reads the host's events. Its package is @neuroplastio/hotty, which isn't published yet.

Lua

hotty-lua is written for two places. hotty.nvim anchors surfaces to positions in a Neovim buffer, so they move with their text. hotty.plx places surfaces in a plx script's tool or rail. Under both, require("hotty") is the protocol alone, in Lua 5.1 with nothing else, so it runs under LuaJIT, PUC Lua and gopher-lua.

Start with the Lua quick start.

Python

clients/python/hotty.py in this repository is one file with no dependencies: every command, the decoder, detection, and a small terminal for the examples. Copy it next to your program to try hotty:

python3 examples/card.py   # in a host, from a checkout of this repository

It passes the SDK sections of the conformance vectors, all but the few that need grapheme clusters, and is not a package with releases. The reference implementation is hotty-go.

Your own

To speak hotty from another language, follow the SDK design and pass the SDK sections of the conformance vectors. The protocol is escape sequences, base64 and msgpack, so any language that can write to its terminal can speak it.