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DevTools

btuin includes a lightweight browser UI for observing your app during TUI development.

Browser DevTools (recommended)

If you use the dev runner (btuin dev ...), browser DevTools is auto-enabled (disable with --no-devtools). The runner also auto-opens the DevTools URL in your browser (disable with --no-open-browser).

Open the printed URL in your browser. It shows logs and a snapshot stream.

The Snapshot view includes a simple Preview (layout boxes + text) and a JSON view (raw snapshot payload).

You can also enable it without code by setting env vars:

  • BTUIN_DEVTOOLS=1 (enable)
  • BTUIN_DEVTOOLS_HOST / BTUIN_DEVTOOLS_PORT (optional)
  • BTUIN_DEVTOOLS_CONTROLLER (optional; module spec/path for the controller)

Hot Reload (Dev Runner)

btuin treats raw terminal input handling as a process-wide singleton. Because of that, doing a true in-process “remount” loop (HMR-style) would accumulate key handlers and lead to duplicated input events.

Instead, the recommended development workflow is to restart the app process on changes (hot reload as a dev runner). It simply re-runs your TUI in the same terminal.

CLI

btuin dev <entry> [options] [-- <args...>]

Examples:

btuin dev examples/devtools.ts
btuin dev src/main.ts --watch src --watch examples
btuin dev src/main.ts -- --foo bar

Options:

  • --watch <path> (repeatable)
  • --debounce <ms> (default: 50)
  • --cwd <path> (default: process.cwd())
  • --no-tcp (disable TCP reload trigger)
  • --tcp-host <host> (default: 127.0.0.1)
  • --tcp-port <port> (default: 0)

TCP Trigger (Optional)

btuin dev enables TCP by default (ephemeral port).

Trigger reload from another terminal:

printf 'reload\n' | nc 127.0.0.1 <port>

Or JSONL:

printf '{"type":"reload"}\n' | nc 127.0.0.1 <port>

Note: hot reload is applied by btuin dev (dev runner).