tiletopia/README.md

tiletopia

A Windows desktop app for running and arranging many WSL terminals at once. Built primarily for managing multiple claude sessions across projects in parallel; works for any multi-shell workflow.

• Tiling layout — recursive splits, draggable dividers, preset layouts (single / 2-col / 3-col / 2-row / 2×2)
• Per-pane distro + cwd + label, persisted across restarts
• Broadcast input to a group of panes (per-pane 📡 chip, or global toggle in the titlebar)
• Idle-detection toasts when a pane goes quiet
• Ctrl+K palette to fuzzy-jump between panes

Install

1. Download the latest tiletopia_<version>_x64-setup.exe from the releases page.
2. Run it. Windows SmartScreen will warn "unrecognized publisher" — it's not code-signed. More info → Run anyway.
3. Launch tiletopia from the Start menu. A window opens with one terminal pane bound to your default WSL distro.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11 with WebView2 Runtime (preinstalled on Win11).
• At least one WSL distro registered (wsl -l -v).

Using it

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
Ctrl+K	open the jump-to-pane palette (fuzzy match over label / distro / cwd; ↑/↓ to move, Enter to focus, Esc to close)
Ctrl+Shift+E	split active pane to the right
Ctrl+Shift+O	split active pane downward
Ctrl+Shift+W	close active pane
Ctrl+Shift+B	toggle broadcast on active pane
Ctrl+Shift+Alt+B	toggle broadcast on ALL panes (same as the titlebar 📡 button)
Ctrl+Shift+← / → / ↑ / ↓	focus neighbour pane in that direction
Ctrl+= / Ctrl+- / Ctrl+0	zoom the active pane in / out / back to default
Ctrl+Shift+= / Ctrl+Shift+- / Ctrl+Shift+0	same, applied to every pane (shift = "to all")

Shortcuts work while a terminal is focused — we capture the key before xterm.js sees it. They don't fire while you're typing into a label edit or the palette input, so those still work normally. Ctrl and ⌘ (Cmd) are interchangeable.

Font size persists per pane in workspace.json, so a zoomed pane stays zoomed across restarts.

Mouse + toolbar

• Split panes — ⇥ in the pane toolbar splits right, ⇣ splits down. The new pane inherits the parent's distro; the cwd defaults to ~ in the WSL distro.
• Close pane — ×. The sibling expands to fill.
• Rename pane — click the label in the toolbar, type, Enter (Esc to cancel).
• Change distro — click the small Ubuntu ▾ chip; pick a distro from the popover. The pane respawns (old shell is killed).
• Swap panes — click-and-drag a pane's toolbar onto another pane. The two leaves trade tree slots; both shells stay alive, both scrollbacks intact.
• Active pane — click any pane → blue border + keyboard focus.
• Resize — drag the gutter between two panes. A 180 px minimum is enforced on both sides.

Broadcast, idle, presets

• Broadcast — toggle 📡 on two or more panes (orange border). Typing in any of them mirrors to the rest. The titlebar 📡 all off / 📡 all on / 📡 N/M button flips the whole group at once.
• Idle indicator — when a pane goes quiet for 5 s, its border turns red and its "alive" toolbar tag swaps to red "idle". The titlebar also shows an N idle count. Clears the moment new output arrives. Active + broadcasting borders take precedence so the focus indicator isn't masked.
• Preset layouts — titlebar buttons 1 / 2H / 3H / 2V / 2×2. Existing panes are spliced into the new shape in order (ids, shells, scrollback preserved); extra slots spawn fresh shells. Only prompts if the preset has fewer slots than you currently have panes (those overflow shells get killed).

Layout + per-pane settings auto-save to %APPDATA%\com.megaproxy.tiletopia\workspace.json (debounced 500 ms).

Stack

• Tauri 2 (Rust backend, WebView2 frontend) — small bundle, native NSIS installer.
• React 18 + TypeScript + Vite + pnpm. (The v0.1.0 release was Svelte 5; v0.2.0+ is React after a ground-up rewrite of the frontend. Same data model, same backend, more reliable reactivity through the recursive Pane chain. The Svelte version is preserved on the svelte-archive branch.)
• xterm.js + @xterm/addon-fit for terminal rendering.
• portable-pty (Rust) spawning wsl.exe -d <distro> PTYs.

Build from source

This targets Windows; the Rust toolchain runs on the Windows host. Prereqs per Tauri docs: MSVC ("C++ build tools" workload), Rust, Node 20+, pnpm (corepack use pnpm@latest), at least one WSL distro.

git clone https://git.rdx4.com/megaproxy/tiletopia.git
cd tiletopia
pnpm install
pnpm tauri dev          # iterate
pnpm tauri build        # NSIS installer at src-tauri\target\release\bundle\nsis\

Keep the source on a Windows-native drive (e.g. C:\ or D:\). Running pnpm against a \\wsl.localhost\... UNC path crashes pnpm 11.x inside isDriveExFat (with a misleading error from the crashing hint formatter).

Run the tests

pnpm test          # vitest, 43 cases on the layout tree
pnpm test:watch
pnpm check         # tsc --noEmit (strict TypeScript pass)
pnpm build         # tsc -b && vite build — full production frontend bundle

The test suite covers the pure helpers in src/lib/layout/tree.ts. UI behavior, broadcast routing, and Tauri integration are manually tested.

Architecture

• Backend (src-tauri/src/pty.rs): PtyManager holding Mutex<HashMap<PaneId, PaneHandle>> of portable-pty children. Each spawned pane gets a background reader thread that emits pane://{id}/data events (base64 byte chunks). Counterparts: write_to_pane / resize_pane / kill_pane. Workspace persistence via save_workspace / load_workspace writes to app.path().app_config_dir() with atomic tmp + rename.
• Layout (src/lib/layout/tree.ts): binary tree of splits. HSplit | VSplit internal nodes with a ratio, Leaf at the bottom — same model as i3 / tmux / Zellij. Adaptive resize falls out of mutating one parent ratio. Pure helpers (splitLeaf, closeLeaf, changeDistro, setAllBroadcast, etc.) live in tree.ts with 43 vitest cases; the rendering chain (Pane.tsx → SplitNode.tsx / LeafPane.tsx) is thin.
• Orchestration — broadcast routing, idle detection, palette, active-pane focus all live in App.tsx. Shared state and operations reach descendants through a React Context (src/lib/layout/orchestration.tsx), so each LeafPane reads activeLeafId, distros, and the tree-mutation methods directly via useOrchestration() — no prop drilling through the recursive Pane chain.

License

No formal license yet. Public for inspection and personal use; if you want to redistribute, open an issue and ask.