Crate oxi_tui 

oxi-tui — terminal-first rendering pipeline + widget library

A greenfield rewrite of oxi’s terminal UI layer. Instead of wrapping ratatui’s Terminal::draw(), oxi-tui decomposes the frame lifecycle so the application owns the cursor-emission decision and can skip rendering unchanged content entirely.

One frame (pipeline::draw_frame, ~14 LOC body):

autoresize → hash-skip → render → flush(DiffBackend) → reconcile cursor → swap

• Hash-skip: if the retained tree’s root hash is unchanged and the terminal wasn’t resized, draw_frame skips rendering and flushes nothing — an idle frame costs ~zero.
• Per-subtree memoization: composite widgets wrap children in widget::RetainedChild so a streaming token change re-renders only the active subtree, not its siblings.
• Cursor dedup: pipeline::CursorState emits cursor escape bytes only on a real visibility/position change — the same position while visible emits zero bytes, which stops the cursor from flickering.

Quick Start

use oxi_tui::pipeline::diff_backend::DiffBackend;
use oxi_tui::pipeline::{CursorState, draw_frame_closure};
use oxi_tui::theme::{TerminalCaps, Theme};
use oxi_tui::widget::FocusTarget;
use ratatui::Terminal;

let backend = DiffBackend::new(ratatui::backend::CrosstermBackend::new(std::io::stdout()));
let mut terminal = Terminal::new(backend)?;
let mut cursor = CursorState::new();
let theme = Theme::dark();
let caps = TerminalCaps::detect();

// Paint one frame. `render_fn` receives a `RenderCtx` whose buffer you
// write into; the pipeline wraps the writes in CSI 2026 synchronized
// output and reconciles the cursor afterwards.
draw_frame_closure(
    &mut terminal,
    &mut cursor,
    FocusTarget::None,
    &theme,
    &caps,
    |_ctx| { /* render your widgets here */ },
)?;

draw_frame_closure takes a transient closure — the cutover API. Once your widgets implement widget::Renderable, pass a widget::RetainedTree to pipeline::draw_frame to get hash-memoized skip for free.

Module map

Module	Purpose
pipeline	frame lifecycle: draw_frame, CursorState, DiffBackend
widget	Renderable trait, RetainedTree, RetainedChild, RenderCtx
content	ChatLog, ChatView, streaming state
text	CJK-aware wrapping, streaming markdown, syntax highlighting
theme	capability-aware palette (palette, capability, serializer)
input	prompt input area (stock ratatui-textarea wrapper)

Spec: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-07-21-tui-render-pipeline-redesign.md.

Modules

content

input

Input widgets — the prompt area where the user types messages.

pipeline

Terminal-first frame lifecycle.

text

Text shaping helpers for the oxi-tui v2 widget library.

theme

Capability-aware theme system. See spec §7.

widget

Retained widget tree + memoization.