sawka

Interesting take! By implementing our UI in React, we're hoping to make it significantly easier and more accessible to write cross-platform terminal extensions (and renderers / apps for different types of content). One of the interesting directions we're looking at is providing native web-based UI for terminal programs. Like a TUI library that renders to actual UI :)

Hah, 100% not a paid promotion, although it is kinda awesome that you think it is! We were thrilled with the coverage (our first article!) after we soft launched on /r/opensource.

Hah, we did not come up with the headline :). Really the vision for Wave is to have an out-of-the-box excellent terminal experience that's consistent across all of the machines that you log into. We also bring cool new features to the terminal like command blocks, output renderers, persistent sessions, and universal history (across all of your sessions, local and remote).

Wave is a terminal, so you're free to use any editor you'd like, including vim, emacs or ed. We just provide another option for users who don't find vim or emacs very intuitive. I've used emacs to code for over 25 years and have no problem using the CLI or text editors (and it seems like neither do you), but there is a learning curve to teaching intro CS students or semi-technical folks how to use vim on the CLI ("type escape colon w q enter to save")

Telemetry is completely optional and anonymous (and we provide a switch to turn it off when you launch the app).

Wave uses electron for rendering, but a Golang backend for networking and heavy lifting. This gives Wave the ability to be cross platform and still efficient under the hood.

We're looking into Wails! Definite benefits with tighter integration with Go (and we can ditch the node server).

absolutely no telemetry in the helper, full stop. you can inspect the code yourself.

we do hear the feedback though and are working on a popup/notification that will prompt you before we push the helper program for the next release.

yes! would love to do this. the biggest issue is security and how to sandbox that html from the rest of the terminal. we have some ideas on how to do this (iframes, postMessage, etc.) that i think could work.

agree in principle, but i will split some hairs here. if you type "ls" into your local terminal, there's an implicit agreement that it will run the remote "ls" program. the helper program facilitates that in the same way that any other terminal + ssh + shell combo does. it only runs commands in response to your activities in the terminal.

the helper program is completely open source (waveshell) it is similar to the shell scripts or additions to your rc files that other modern terminals might add when connecting to a remote machine to support advanced features. the helper does not need any additional permissions, does not open any ports, runs only for the duration of the connection, and communicates exclusively via stdout/stdin over your standard ssh connection.

i think the terminal can be much better than it is today. i quit my job and started working on this full time after making the prototype because i was convinced that universal history, inline rendering, and persistent sessions just needed to happen. that being said, building a new terminal is hard and requires direction and a full-time team. these things are expensive and venture money will help us bring this idea to life quickly.

i also want to point out that the main competitor in this space is also venture backed and is closed source. we need the money to keep up (with help from the OSS community) and make sure there is a great open alternative in the market.

ya, i love iTerm. been a loyal user for more than 10 years. that is until Wave of course :)