Terminal for Multi-platform

Vs grep (POSIX baseline) and ag/The Silver Searcher (predecessor): ripgrep is the modern default, not a POSIX drop-in. If your workflow depends on GNU grep flags exactly, `rg` is similar but not identical. No built-in fuzzy matching — pair with fzf for interactive filtering.

Vs cat (POSIX baseline): bat is heavier — startup and memory cost for highlighting. Not a POSIX cat drop-in for scripts expecting raw byte streams. Large files or binary content should still use plain cat. Theme configuration is optional but becomes a rabbit hole.

Vs ripgrep (content search) and fzf (fuzzy UI): fd finds *names*, not file contents, and it is not an interactive fuzzy picker. Not a POSIX find drop-in for every `-exec`/`-printf` edge case. Large trees still need sensible roots; it is not a content indexer.

Vs Starship (prompt *theme*): gum is scriptable interaction widgets, not your PS1 theme. Adds a Charm binary dependency to scripts that used to be pure POSIX. Non-interactive CI still needs flags/`--` paths that skip the TUI.

Vs bat (generic syntax highlight cat): glow is Markdown-*first* presentation, not a drop-in for every source file. Heavier than bat for one-off file peeks. Stash/cloud-adjacent features are optional — local files are the core job.

It benchmarks *process wall time*, not flamegraphs or allocator profiles — pair with a profiler when the hot path is inside one long process. Shell overhead and cold caches still skew naive runs; read the warmup flags. Not a load-test / HTTP soak tool.

Vs bat (file viewer) and lazygit (TUI Git client): delta is the *diff pager*, not a file cat and not a staging UI. Config lives in gitconfig — wrong pager nesting with less can surprise. Huge binary diffs still want `--stat` or path filters first.

Vs fzf (fuzzy finder) and zoxide (directory jumper): Yazi is a full *file manager*, not a one-shot picker or frecency cd. Preview depends on terminal image protocols and optional external tools. Learning the keymap is real onboarding versus plain ls/cd.

Vs Tilt (K8s microservice *dev control plane*): watchexec is the entr-class local file watcher, not a cluster live-update UI. Not a build system and not a process supervisor for multi-service graphs. You still write the command and filter extensions yourself.

Vs Grafana/Prometheus (fleet metrics + dashboards): btop is *local host* TUI, not a scrape/store/alert stack. Pick it over bottom, the Rust twin. Not a remote multi-node observability product.

Vs cloc/scc and vs GitHub language bars: tokei is the *local CLI/library* for code stats, not a hosted insights product and not a complexity/churn analyzer. Counts are still heuristics — generated code and vendor trees need excludes. Not a dependency auditor.

Vs Yazi (terminal *file manager* / nav ≠ size): dust answers “what is using disk,” not browse/preview/move. Vs plain `du`: opinionated overview, not every POSIX du flag. Permission-denied noise is minimized, but you still need roots you can read.

Vs fzf (generic fuzzy finder) and just (recipe runner): navi is cheatsheet *browse + param fill + run*, not a bare fuzzy filter and not a Justfile task graph. You still author or import cheats; empty cheats dirs teach nothing. Depends on a finder binary.

Last commit June 2024 (latest release v0.9.0, July 2023): stable but unmaintained, so expect no fixes or new releases. Vs jq (*filter language*): jless is an interactive *viewer/pager*, not a transform DSL and not a YAML tool. Pair with jq when you need to rewrite; open jless when you need to see.

Vs HTTPie (Python CLI UX) and curl: xh is the *Rust single-binary* cousin, not a plugin ecosystem and not every HTTPie feature. Incomplete parity is intentional (#4). curl still wins when the script must assume the OS already has it.

Vs sed: intentional *subset*, not a full sed dialect — no sed scripts, hold space, or every GNU extension. Vs ripgrep (search) and fd (names): sd *rewrites*, it does not search a tree or find filenames. Keep sed for the ancient one-liners that already work.

Vs btop (host *resource* TUI with CPU/mem/disk/net/GPU): procs is the modern *ps*, not a live metrics dashboard. Not multi-host observability. Keep `ps` when POSIX scripts expect its exact columns.

Vs Semgrep (SAST/SCA product with Free Edition caps) and ripgrep (text search): ast-grep is the *structural AST CLI/codemod*, not a hosted AppSec platform and not byte/regex grep. You author AST patterns; text-only hunts still belong to rg. Slug is `ast-grep` (binary often `sg`).

Vs delta (syntax-highlight *pager* for git diffs): difftastic is a *structural AST diff*, not a pretty pager over unified diff. Unsupported or huge files fall back to line-oriented. Language coverage is wide but not infinite — unknown formats lose the AST trick.

Vs Zellij (Rust *workspace/layouts/plugins*) and Helix (modal *editor*): Ghostty is the *emulator*, not a muxer and not an editor. You still pick tmux/Zellij or Helix inside it. Official app is macOS + Linux; Windows GUI is not shipped.

macOS only. The license is split: the app is GPL, but the server parts (web/ and several workers/ directories) are Business Source License 1.1 and need a commercial license from Manaflow for production use, including self-hosting. Browser import can pull cookies and sessions from 20+ browsers into its panes — convenient, and a lot of trust to hand a terminal. Over 3,000 open issues and pull requests on a fast-moving repo. Vs ghostty (the emulator it builds on) and thurbox (tmux TUI orchestrator): cmux is the native GUI for agent attention, not a muxer or a harness.

Pre-1.0, and the feature list moves fast — expect config and keybinding churn between releases. It is a new multiplexer to learn, with vim-style modes, so it costs real muscle memory if you live in tmux. Approving agent prompts from a central Inbox is convenient and also makes it easy to approve something you did not read. Vs cmux (native macOS app, GPL with BSL server parts) and zellij (general multiplexer): tuios runs in any terminal on any OS and is built around agent state.

The AI agent needs your own API key and endpoint — nothing is bundled — and it runs real commands on the machines you are connected to, so review before approving. The WSL and Windows remote features are Windows-only. Young project. Vs tabby (a mature, extensible terminal with SSH and serial): Uniterm trades polish for far wider protocol coverage and an agent.