Introduction

Experimental - Documentation Under Active Development

⚠️ Documentation Status

This documentation is under active development and has not been fully reviewed. Some sections may be incomplete, outdated, or contain errors. Several features (Terminal, Canvas, Image, Effects) are marked as experimental with known limitations.

For the most accurate information, see code examples in crates/telex/examples/ and API documentation via cargo doc --open.

Telex Logo

Telex is a terminal UI framework for Rust, inspired by React's component model.

use telex::prelude::*;

struct App;

impl Component for App {
    fn render(&self, cx: Scope) -> View {
        let count = state!(cx, || 0);

        View::vstack()
            .child(View::text(format!("Count: {}", count.get())))
            .child(
                View::button()
                    .label("Increment")
                    .on_press(with!(count => move || count.update(|n| *n += 1)))
                    .build()
            )
            .build()
    }
}

fn main() {
    telex::run(App).unwrap();
}

Why Telex?

  • Familiar model - If you know React, you know Telex. State, hooks, components.
  • Rust-native - No runtime, no garbage collector. Just Rust.
  • DX-first - Builder pattern or JSX-like macros. Your choice.

Note: Telex is currently keyboard-only. Mouse support (scroll wheel, click-to-focus, widget interactions) is planned but not yet implemented.

What you'll find here

This book takes you from hello world to building real applications:

  1. Getting Started - Installation, first app, core concepts
  2. Building UIs - Layouts, lists, inputs, modals
  3. Dynamic Data - Streams, effects, async loading
  4. Widgets - Tables, trees, tabs, forms, menus
  5. Advanced Patterns - Keyed state, shared state, context

Each chapter builds on the last. Code examples are runnable - you'll find them in crates/telex/examples/.

Running examples

Every concept has a corresponding example:

# Run a specific example
cargo run -p telex-tui --example 02_counter

# See all examples
ls crates/telex/examples/

Quick tour: For a fast overview, run ./run-examples.sh - an interactive menu that lets you browse and run all examples. Great for getting a feel for what Telex can do.

Press F1 in any example to see what it demonstrates.

Let's get started.