{"slug": "show-hn-i-made-niri-like-terminal-colm-cmux-alternative", "title": "Show HN: I made Niri-like terminal colm (cmux alternative)", "summary": "Developer al3rez released colm, an MIT-licensed Linux terminal workspace manager for coding agents built as a fork of the Ghostty terminal, according to a Show HN post. colm adds a workspace sidebar, a niri-style horizontal column strip, a live column overview grid, SSH remote workspaces with tmux-backed persistence, and a JSON-RPC unix socket for scripting, and it integrates permission and plan prompts from agents including Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and aider. The project requires Zig 0.15, GTK 4.16+, and libadwaita 1.5+, and runs on Wayland and X11.", "body_md": "# colm\n\nThe terminal for\n\n      A Linux workspace manager for coding agents, built on\n      [Ghostty](https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty).\n      Workspaces live in a sidebar, terminals live in a horizontal column\n      strip, and everything is scriptable over a JSON control socket.\n    \n\n## FEATURES\n\n- **Workspace sidebar.** Pin, mute, group, and drag-reorder workspaces. Each row shows task status, git branch, agent activity, and a live notification preview.\n- **Column strip.** Terminals tile horizontally like niri. Split, zoom, and jump between columns without leaving the keyboard.\n- **Column overview.** A native-style grid of live column thumbnails — search, click, or arrow-key to any tile in the active workspace.\n- **Agent aware.** Permission prompts, exit plans, and questions from Claude Code and friends surface as cards you can answer from the feed sidebar.\n- **Remote workspaces.** Attach whole workspaces to remote machines over SSH with tmux-backed persistence.\n- **Scriptable.** Every window, workspace, and pane is addressable over a JSON-RPC unix socket — create, focus, split, close, snapshot.\n- **Ghostty core.** GPU-accelerated rendering, fast startup, and the full Ghostty terminal engine underneath.\n- **Open source.** MIT licensed, like the Ghostty it stands on.\n\n## INSTALL\n\n```\ngit clone https://github.com/al3rez/colm\ncd colm\nzig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast -p ~/.local/opt/colm\n```\n\nRequires Zig 0.15, GTK 4.16+, and libadwaita 1.5+.\n\n## FAQ\n\nHow is this different from Ghostty?\n\ncolm is a fork focused on managing many agent sessions at once: a workspace sidebar, a niri-style column strip, live overviews, and an automation socket. The terminal underneath is unmodified Ghostty.\n\nWhich platforms?\n\nLinux with GTK 4 and libadwaita. Wayland and X11 both work.\n\nWhich agents?\n\nAnything that runs in a terminal. Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, aider — permission and plan prompts integrate with the feed when the agent supports it.\n\nIs it free?\n\nYes. MIT licensed, no accounts, no telemetry.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-i-made-niri-like-terminal-colm-cmux-alternative", "canonical_source": "https://colm.sh/", "published_at": "2026-09-19 04:44:43+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-19 04:54:32.343470+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "developer-tools", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["colm", "Ghostty", "al3rez", "Claude Code", "Codex", "OpenCode", "aider", "Zig"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-i-made-niri-like-terminal-colm-cmux-alternative", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-i-made-niri-like-terminal-colm-cmux-alternative.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-i-made-niri-like-terminal-colm-cmux-alternative.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/show-hn-i-made-niri-like-terminal-colm-cmux-alternative.jsonld"}}