Python TUI framework with DOM, CSS, widgets and web serving.
textual.textualize.io ↗repo ↗docs ↗Devtools guide ↗textual-serve ↗Toad ↗The future of Textualize ↗textual-mcp-server (third party) ↗
Textual's addressing, driver verbs and screenshot readback are proven designs scene should copy, but its code-defined UI and Python runtime don't fit a Rust JSON-scene.
Borrow from it: take a specific idea, API or format.
Textual is the closest thing the terminal has to a browser: a real DOM you can query by CSS selector, a real stylesheet language with live reload, a compositor that does overlapping layers and partial updates, a rich widget set (DataTable, TextArea with tree-sitter, Markdown, Tree, Tabs), and an app that runs unchanged in a web browser via textual serve. Its Pilot test driver already gives you what agents need in principle — press keys, click a selector, wait for idle, take an SVG screenshot — and the DOM means an agent can address 'the button with id save' instead of cell coordinates. It is MIT, battle-tested by thousands of apps and millions of weekly installs, and its author has gone all-in on agents with Toad. For Python shops it is the obvious substrate, and a thin MCP over Pilot gets you most of an agent-drivable TUI.
| UI as data | 3 scene 5 | compose() in Python plus TCSS; CSS is data, widget tree is code |
|---|---|---|
| Agent can drive it | 2 scene 5 | Pilot is an API but only for a test/headless instance; MCP wrappers are third-party and tiny |
| Agent can see it | 4 scene 5 | Selector-queryable DOM plus SVG screenshots (in-process) |
| Small, targeted edits | 2 scene 5 | Selector-addressed mutation exists in-process, not as a protocol |
| Time travel | 0 scene 0 | |
| Live data rate | 3 scene 5 | |
| Terminal native | 5 scene 5 | |
| Pixel graphics | 2 scene 4 | Third-party textual-image (Kitty TGP / Sixel) |
| Teaching | 2 scene 3 | textual serve, SVG screenshots and live CSS make demos easy; no tour features |
| Maturity | 4 scene 1 | Widely used; dev slowdown after Textualize closed keeps it off 5 |
| Openness | 4 scene 4 | MIT but effectively single-maintainer controlled |
Textual scene now scene planned
Code generation, plus in-process automation via Pilot (run_test). Third-party MCP servers wrap Pilot (discohead/textual-mcp-server, 4 stars: 'drive Textual TUI apps headlessly'). Toad is the inverse: a Textual UI for agents over the Agent Client Protocol, not agents driving Textual.
Moderate: write or adopt an MCP wrapper around Pilot; the agent then gets selector-addressed clicks/keys and SVG screenshots of a headless instance (not the user's live one).
Good in-process: the DOM can be queried by CSS selector, widget state read, and App.save_screenshot()/Pilot produce SVG renders. No built-in external socket for a live app.
In-process code can mutate any widget by id/selector and change styles; from outside only via a custom wrapper.
None (devtools console shows logs/events only).
The most introspectable of the mainstream frameworks (DOM + selectors + screenshots), but agent access is in-process/test-harness, not a live-instance protocol.
Retained mode: an App owns a DOM of Widget objects composed in Python (compose() yields children), styled by Textual CSS (TCSS) with selectors, layout (grid/horizontal/vertical/dock) and live reload. Reactive attributes trigger refresh; message passing between widgets is async (asyncio). A compositor (inherited from Rich's Segment model) merges overlapping widgets into a final segment list and only updates changed regions. Output drivers target terminals and, via textual-serve/textual-web, a browser.
Design write-ups but no published frames/sec or update-throughput benchmarks found.
The dominant Python TUI framework, with very high PyPI volume and a large app ecosystem.
Used by: Toad (batrachianai/toad, 3.5k stars), Posting (HTTP client, shown in textual-serve docs), Many Python devtools and agent front ends (e.g. gentui AG-UI client)
Mature and stable ('mature and battle-tested' per McGugan) but now a one-person project with activity dropping off.
Releases: Frequent until mid-2026, now quiet: v8.2.3 2026-04-05, v8.2.4 04-19, v8.2.5 04-30, v8.2.6 05-13, v8.2.7 05-19, v8.2.8 06-30. Last commit to main 2026-07-11. · Contributors: ~192 (GitHub contributors API incl. anonymous) · Recent: 1 commit and 1 merged PR since 2026-07-11 (GitHub API): effectively dormant for 3 months · Bus factor: low: willmcgugan has ~7,000 of the commits; the company that employed the other core devs closed in 2025
Addressable widget tree (ids/selectors), stylesheet-driven theming, headless driving with keys/clicks and rendered screenshots, web serving.
Selector-addressed nodes, a layout/style system, screenshot readback and a headless test driver — Textual has had these, polished, for years.
A UI that is one serializable JSON value pushed/patched over a socket into a live (not test) instance, data streams bypassing the model at thousands/s, hot-swap upgrade, kitty pixel layer beneath text, agent time travel.
| 1–7 | home · features · use cases · docs · changelog · under the hood · blog |
| t | light or dark |
| j k | scroll |
| g G | top · bottom |
| ? Esc | this · close |