Gridland is a runtime + ShadCN UI registry that makes it possible to build terminal apps that run in the browser as well as the native terminal. This is useful for demoing TUIs so that users know what they're getting before they are invested enough to install them. And, tbh, it's also just super fun!
Gridland is the successor to Ink Web (ink-web.dev) which is the same concept, but using Ink + xterm.js. After building Ink Web, we continued experimenting and found that using OpenTUI and a canvas renderer performed better with less flickering and nearly instant load times.
We're excited to continue iterating on this. I expect a lot of criticism from the "why does this need to exist" angle, and tbh, it probably doesn't - it's really mostly just for fun, but we still think the demo use case mentioned previously has potential.
- Chris + Jess
