ratty 0.2.0

Features

Spinning rat cursor (customizable)
Traditional 2D and new 3D mode!
Inline 3D objects
GPU-backed text rendering
Image support (via Kitty Graphics Protocol >:()

▶️ Watch the demo video here!
📚 Read the behind the scenes blog post here!

3D mode

Ever wondered what's behind the terminal? Press Ctrl+Alt+Enter!

Installation

Requirements:

Rust toolchain with Cargo
A GPU / graphics stack supported by Bevy and wgpu
Melted cheese (optional but recommended)

crates.io

cargo install ratty

Arch Linux

pacman -S ratty

Binary releases

Prebuilt binaries are available on the GitHub releases page for direct download.

From Git

cargo install --git https://github.com/orhun/ratty

Configuration

The default configuration file is available in config/ratty.toml.

You can copy this file to $HOME/.config/ratty/ratty.toml and customize it.

Changing the cursor

[cursor.model]
path = "CairoSpinyMouse.obj"
scale_factor = 6.0
brightness = 0.5
x_offset = 0.5
plane_offset = 18.0
visible = true

[cursor.animation]
spin_speed = 1.4
bob_speed = 2.2
bob_amplitude = 0.08

For cursor.model.path, Ratty supports both .obj and .glb assets.

Other useful cursor fields are:

scale_factor: scales the model relative to the terminal cell size
brightness: adjusts the cursor material brightness
x_offset: shifts the cursor model horizontally inside the cell
plane_offset: pushes the cursor away from the warped terminal surface in 3D mode
visible: show the custom 3D cursor model instead of only the terminal cursor

Key Bindings

Key	Action
Ctrl+Alt+C	Copy selection
Ctrl+Alt+V	Paste clipboard
Ctrl+=	Increase font size
Ctrl+-	Decrease font size
Ctrl+Alt+0	Reset font size
Ctrl+Alt+Enter	Toggle 2D / 3D mode
Ctrl+Alt+M	Toggle Mobius mode
Ctrl+Alt+Up	Increase warp
Ctrl+Alt+Down	Decrease warp

Inline 3D objects

Ratty uses its own protocol, the Ratty Graphics Protocol, to place inline 3D objects in terminal space.

RGP supports:

registering .obj and .glb assets by path
placing them at terminal cell anchors
animation, scale, color, depth and other attributes

There is a Ratatui widget called ratatui-rgp available in widget/ if you want to build your own terminal applications that involve inline 3D objects.

Examples

Big rat

Places a single oversized rat directly in your terminal:

Document

TempleOS-inspired document demo with editable text and embedded inline 3D objects:

Draw

Split-pane drawing demo with a 2D canvas on the left and a live 3D preview on the right:

Architecture

Rendering pipeline

The terminal surface currently uses ratatui for the UI buffer, parley_ratatui for text shaping/rendering and Bevy for scene presentation.

Current workflow:

Ratatui buffer on CPU
Parley/Vello renders on GPU
Read back RGBA to CPU
Copy into Bevy image
Bevy presents that image in 2D and 3D

Terminal drawing is GPU-rendered through Parley/Vello, but the main terminal image still crosses back through CPU memory before Bevy presents it. This is a GPU-powered bridge, not a fully GPU-resident shared-texture path.

If the project later moves to a fully GPU-resident path, that will require a dedicated Bevy render integration that renders into a Bevy-owned texture on Bevy's render-world device instead of using the current readback bridge.

Endorsements

"This is like a legitimately cool project but also I just spent like 20 minutes adjusting the config for the rat spinning to see him spin faster and more erratically and it cracked me up" - @vimlena.com

"These kinds of experiments are where creativity is born." - @Coko7
"No comments. Just support." - @Raphamorim (creator of Rio terminal)
"tetro-tui running in Ratty" - @Strophox

License

All code is licensed under The MIT License.

Credits

Ratty logo designed by @Strophox & @Harunocaksiz