Prise

WARNING Prise is alpha software under active development. Expect breaking changes, incomplete features, and rough edges.

Prise is a terminal multiplexer targeted at modern terminals.

Installation

Homebrew (macOS)

brew tap rockorager/tap
brew install prise
brew services start prise

From Source

To install the binary and service files:

zig build install --prefix ~/.local

To enable and start the prise server as a background service:

zig build enable-service --prefix ~/.local

This will:

• macOS: Symlink the launchd plist to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ and load it
• Linux: Symlink the systemd unit to ~/.config/systemd/user/ and enable it

Manual Service Management

Homebrew (macOS):

brew services start prise
brew services stop prise

macOS (from source):

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/sh.prise.server.plist  # stop
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/sh.prise.server.plist    # start

Linux:

systemctl --user stop prise     # stop
systemctl --user start prise    # start
systemctl --user status prise   # check status

Goals

1. Modern Terminal Features: This is a core tenet. Terminals that do not provide the base level of modern features will not be supported; prise will refuse to start in such environments.
2. High-Performance Agentic Development: Prise serves as an experiment in collaborative, high-performance software development driven by agentic coding and AI assistance. Together, we can build high performance software with AI agents.
3. Extensibility: Extensibility is at the core of the UI. The user interface is designed to be fully replaceable through configuration or by using a third-party client.

Agentic Coding

Core Thesis: High-performance software is the result of quality engineering.

Prise is built on a solid foundation of libghostty, libvaxis, and Lua. While these tools provide an excellent starting point, they do not guarantee success—it is still entirely possible to build bad software with good tools. Agentic coding—leveraging AI agents to amplify engineering capabilities—is capable of consistently producing the quality software this project demands.

Prise is an agentic coded project. Contributions are welcome. Show me your vibes.

• Sharing of AI conversation threads is preferred when submitting contributions, even if those threads did not directly result in the final Pull Request.
• If you cannot afford paid AI tools, check out Amp's free mode.
• There are also other free options available, such as OpenCode using compatible models.

Development Setup

To set up your development environment (installs pre-commit hook):

zig build setup

Build Instructions

To build the project:

zig build

To run the project:

zig build run

To run tests:

zig build test

To format code:

zig build fmt

Configuration

Prise is configured via Lua. Create ~/.config/prise/init.lua to customize the UI.

Example Configuration

-- Use the built-in tiling UI with custom options
local ui = require("prise").tiling()

ui.setup({
    theme = {
        mode_normal = "#7aa2f7",  -- Tokyo Night blue
        mode_command = "#f7768e", -- Tokyo Night red
        bg1 = "#1a1b26",
        bg2 = "#24283b",
        bg3 = "#414868",
        accent = "#7aa2f7",
    },
    keybinds = {
        leader = { key = "a", ctrl = true },  -- Use Ctrl+a as leader (like tmux)
    },
    status_bar = {
        enabled = true,
    },
    tab_bar = {
        show_single_tab = false,
    },
})

return ui

Default Keybinds

The default leader key is Super+k (Cmd+k on macOS). After pressing the leader:

Key	Action
v	Split vertical
s	Split horizontal
h/j/k/l	Focus left/down/up/right
w	Close pane
z	Toggle zoom
t	New tab
c	Close tab
n/p	Next/previous tab
d	Detach session
q	Quit

Press Super+p to open the command palette.

Lua LSP Setup

Prise installs type definitions to <prefix>/share/prise/lua/. To get autocomplete and type checking in your editor, add this path to your Lua language server configuration.

Neovim (with nvim-lspconfig)

require("lspconfig").lua_ls.setup({
    settings = {
        Lua = {
            workspace = {
                library = {
                    vim.fn.expand("~/.local/share/prise/lua"),
                },
            },
        },
    },
})

Neovim (with LazyVim)

Add to lua/plugins/lua_ls.lua:

return {
    "neovim/nvim-lspconfig",
    opts = {
        servers = {
            lua_ls = {
                settings = {
                    Lua = {
                        workspace = {
                            library = {
                                vim.fn.expand("~/.local/share/prise/lua"),
                            },
                        },
                    },
                },
            },
        },
    },
}

VS Code

Add to .vscode/settings.json:

{
    "Lua.workspace.library": [
        "~/.local/share/prise/lua"
    ]
}

.luarc.json (project-level)

{
    "workspace.library": [
        "~/.local/share/prise/lua"
    ]
}

Requirements

The following binaries are required for development:

• stylua (for Lua formatting)
• zigdoc (for documentation)