Samples And Tooling

The repository includes multiple samples and validation tools. They are part of the product story, not just incidental demos.

RoyalTerminal.Demo

The main Avalonia demo is the most complete integration example. It includes:

• runtime tabs
• interactive split panes with keyboard focus and resize commands
• workspace restore/save for windows, tabs, pane trees, render mode, working directory, profile id, and transport id
• mode switching across Native VT, Managed VT, and Rendered (Auto VT)
• transport forms for PTY, pipe, raw TCP, Telnet, serial, and SSH
• searchable profile launcher backed by persisted session profiles and shell discovery
• shell-integrated command history capture and command suggestions
• a tabbed settings flyout
• profile CRUD and default-profile handling
• settings profile actions exposed through the window menu
• session logging and event logging
• capture and replay with selectable RoyalTerminal JSON or asciicast v3 files
• search
• theme presets and generated themes
• framebuffer shader samples
• snapshot copy actions
• hyperlink and Kitty graphics showcase actions
• macOS application menu replacement for About, Preferences, and Quit
• window native menus for shell, edit, view, session, window, and help commands
• compact extended-titlebar command bar with native titlebar hit-test roles

Settings categories in the demo:

• Session
• Connection
• Terminal
• Appearance
• SSH
• Logging

If you want a realistic host application launcher, start here. The reusable shell implementation lives in RoyalApps.RoyalTerminal.Avalonia.App.

The shared shell View menu includes a shader sample action that cycles through built-in post-process effects:

• Off
• CRT Amber
• Hue Shift
• Transparent Key
• Retro Scanlines
• Windows Terminal CRT
• Ghostty Shadertoy

The capture persistence behavior is covered in Capture Formats. The sample catalog is documented in Applying Shaders. The compatibility details are covered in Shader Support. Product workflow topics are split into dedicated articles:

• Workspace Restore
• Split Panes
• Shell Integration
• Command History And Suggestions
• Demo Product Shell

Pane shortcuts in the demo:

Command	Shortcut
Split pane right	Alt+Shift+OemPlus
Split pane down	Alt+Shift+OemMinus
Focus pane left/right/up/down	Alt+Arrow
Resize pane left/right/up/down	Alt+Shift+Arrow

Command-history shortcuts in the demo:

Command	Shortcut
Open command-history overlay	Ctrl+Space
Accept selected suggestion	Ctrl+Enter

RoyalTerminal.ControlCatalog

The control catalog is a validation and inspection tool rather than a simple showcase. It groups scenarios into:

• validation scenarios
• visual scenarios
• interactive scenarios

It can run as:

• an interactive CLI menu for manual inspection
• a redirected-output full sweep for automated result capture

Representative coverage areas include VT modes, queries, OSC behavior, Kitty features, rendering galleries, TUI compatibility, and PTY lifecycle validation.

RoyalTerminal.MacNativeTabbed

This sample is intentionally separate from the managed RoyalTerminal surface. It hosts GhosttyKit directly through SwiftUI/AppKit and demonstrates native macOS tabbed hosting.

Use it when you need to understand:

• direct GhosttyKit surface hosting
• native macOS tab management patterns
• how the repo separates managed and native sample surfaces

Tests

The repository includes several test layers:

Project	Focus
tests/RoyalTerminal.Tests	unit tests, headless Avalonia tests, rendering tests, transport tests, package boundary tests
tests/RoyalTerminal.IntegrationTests	VT parser behavior, paste, key encoding, SSH integration
tests/RoyalTerminal.Benchmarks	performance baselines
tests/RoyalTerminal.PtyHarness	PTY harness support

The test names are descriptive and double as subsystem maps. If you need to understand whether a behavior is intentional, read the relevant test file before changing the implementation.

Internal reference material

The repository also contains a rich internal reference set under skills/royalterminal-development/references/. Those files are not the public docs site, but they are extremely useful when you need source-grounded details about:

• architecture guardrails
• transport mappings
• VT behavior
• native packaging
• rendering
• validation recipes

This public site distills that information into a consumer-facing guide while keeping the low-level repo references available for contributors.