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Serious React TUI renderer for serious CLI apps. Pure TypeScript Yoga layout, diff-based rendering, ScrollBox, alt buffer, mouse events, draggable and resizable components.

2 starsTypeScript

Drag-and-Drop in the Terminal

Name: Drag-and-Drop in the Terminal
Availability: InStock
Author: re-marked

by re-marked·Apr 29, 2026·2 points·0 comments

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AI Analysis

●●SolidWizardryNiche Gem

Cell-by-cell diff rendering hits O(changed cells) while Ink redraws entire frames.

Strengths

•Cell-by-cell diff rendering achieves O(changed cells) not O(rows × cols)
•Pure TypeScript Yoga layout with draggable and resizable component primitives
•ScrollBox with sticky scroll and alt buffer support for streaming output

Weaknesses

•Ink already dominates the React TUI renderer space with larger community
•Terminal drag-and-drop solves niche problems most CLI apps don't have

Post Description

I built drag-and-drop in the terminal.

You can grab an element with a mouse, drag it, drop it on a target, and drag-select text inside it across wrapped rows.

It's built in Yokai, my Ink fork: a React TUI renderer with pure-TS Yoga layout, diff-based rendering, ScrollBox, alt buffer, mouse events, and draggable/resizable components.

I built Yokai because I kept hitting Ink's limits and needed things Ink couldn't offer for my TUI-based project.

Try it:

pnpm demo:scratchpad # draggable editor window (an opaque sticky note you can drag across the screen and edit) pnpm demo:drag # drag rectangles into a drop zone (the one in the readme banner)