Ghostel.el embeds libghostty as an Emacs terminal

Category: Dev tools
Status: discussion
Sources: Ghostel, HN discussion
Summary: Ghostel is an Emacs terminal emulator built on libghostty-vt, the VT engine behind the Ghostty terminal. A native dynamic module written in Zig handles terminal state, rendering, and local PTY I/O, while Elisp manages keymaps, buffers, and commands. It requires Emacs 28.1 or later with dynamic-module support, ships on MELPA, and downloads prebuilt binaries for macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows on first use (Zig 0.15.2 needed only to build from source). It supports the Kitty graphics protocol, OSC 8 hyperlinks, synchronized output, the Kitty keyboard protocol, TRAMP remote terminals, and shell-integration injection for bash, zsh, and fish.
Why it matters: It reuses Ghostty's terminal engine outside the Ghostty app, giving Emacs a VT implementation with modern protocol support without reimplementing terminal emulation in Elisp.