mud-slop 0.1.5

A terminal-based MUD client with GMCP support, ANSI colors, and protocol inspection

mud-slop

A terminal-based MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) client with GMCP support, ANSI color rendering, and protocol inspection. Built entirely with the Python standard library.

Features

• ANSI color rendering — full support for 8 foreground/background colors, bright variants, bold, underline, and reverse
• GMCP support — negotiates with Aardwolf-style servers and displays HP/Mana/Moves bars and character attributes in a stats pane
• Conversation overlay — speech lines (says, tells, whispers, yells, asks) are captured and shown in a navigable overlay panel
• Info ticker — INFO: channel messages display in a ticker bar above the input line
• Map pane — ASCII maps are extracted using <MAPSTART>/<MAPEND> tags, room descriptions via {rdesc}/{/rdesc} tags, and rendered in a fixed panel on the right side of the screen showing room name, coords, map, exits, and word-wrapped description
• Help pager — help content wrapped in {help}/{/help} tags is displayed in a scrollable overlay with paging controls (PgUp/PgDn/Home/End/ESC), allowing users to read help while still typing commands
• Debug logging — writes output, protocol, and GMCP streams to log files
• Scrollback — Page Up/Down to scroll through history; configurable content visibility when scrolled up (conversations shown by default, help/maps/info hidden; toggle with /history)
• Command history — Up/Down arrows with prefix filtering
• Line editing — Left/Right arrows, Ctrl+A/E (home/end), Ctrl+Left/Right (word jump), Ctrl+W/U/K (kill word/to-start/to-end), Delete key
• Password masking — input is hidden when the server signals password mode (via telnet WILL ECHO)
• Auto-login profiles — store credentials in gitignored YAML profiles (profiles/<name>.yml) and use -p <name> to log in automatically

Requirements

• Python 3.9+
• uv (recommended) or pip

Installation

From PyPI (recommended)

pip install mud-slop

Or with uv:

uv tool install mud-slop

From source

git clone <repo-url> && cd mud-slop
uv sync

Usage

uv run mud-slop <host> <port>

Options

Flag	Description
-v, --version	Show version and exit
-c, --config	Configuration name or path (see Configuration)
-p, --profile	Login profile name or path (see Profiles)
--create-profile NAME	Create a login profile interactively (saves to ~/.mud-slop/profiles/)
--no-color	Disable ANSI color rendering
-d, --debug	Enable debug logging to mud_*.log files
--conv-pos {top-left|top-center|...|bottom-right}	Conversation overlay position (default: bottom-right)

Examples

# Connect to Aardwolf using config file
uv run mud-slop -c aardwolf

# Connect with explicit host/port (overrides config)
uv run mud-slop aardmud.org 4000

# With debug logging enabled
uv run mud-slop -c aardwolf --debug

# Create a login profile (prompts for username/password)
uv run mud-slop --create-profile mychar

# Auto-login with a profile
uv run mud-slop -c aardwolf -p mychar

# Override host/port from config
uv run mud-slop -c aardwolf localhost 5000

Configuration

Configuration files are YAML files loaded via -c <name> or -c <path>. CLI arguments override config values.

Search order for config names:

1. ~/.mud-slop/configs/<name>.yml (user configs)
2. ./configs/<name>.yml (current directory)
3. Package configs/ directory (bundled configs)

You can also pass a full path: -c ~/my-configs/custom.yml

Example config structure (configs/aardwolf.yml):

connection:
  host: aardmud.org
  port: 4000

gmcp:
  subscriptions:
    - "char 1"
    - "char.vitals 1"
    - "char.stats 1"

patterns:
  map:
    start_tag: '<MAPSTART>'
    end_tag: '<MAPEND>'
  info:
    prefix: '^INFO:\s+'

timers:
  conversation:
    auto_close: 8.0

ui:
  right_panel_max_width: 70
  max_output_lines: 5000
  history:
    conversations: true
    help: false

hooks:
  # Commands to run after login (when GMCP vitals first arrive)
  post_login:
    - map
    - look
  # Commands to run before disconnecting
  on_exit:
    - quit

See configs/default.yml for the complete schema with all options.

Profiles

Login profiles store credentials for auto-login. Profile files are gitignored to prevent committing secrets.

Search order for profile names:

1. ~/.mud-slop/profiles/<name>.yml (user profiles)
2. ./profiles/<name>.yml (current directory)
3. Package profiles/ directory

You can also pass a full path: -p ~/my-profiles/mychar.yml

Create a profile interactively (password input is hidden, saves to ~/.mud-slop/profiles/):

mud-slop --create-profile mychar

Then use it to auto-login:

mud-slop -c aardwolf -p mychar

The client sends the username after the server's initial prompt and sends the password when the server enters password mode (telnet WILL ECHO). See profiles/README.md for details.

In-app commands

Command	Action
/quit	Exit the client
/clear	Clear output pane (and conversation, map, ticker)
/debug	Toggle debug logging on/off at runtime
/info	Show timestamped info message history
/history	Show history visibility settings
/history <type> [on|off]	Toggle what shows when scrolled up (types: conversations, help, maps, info)

Everything else typed at the prompt is sent to the server.

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
Enter	Send input
Left / Right	Move cursor within input line
Ctrl+A	Jump to start of input
Ctrl+E	Jump to end of input
Ctrl+Left / Ctrl+Right	Jump word left/right
Backspace	Delete character before cursor
Delete	Delete character at cursor
Ctrl+W	Delete word backwards
Ctrl+U	Delete to start of line
Ctrl+K	Delete to end of line
Up / Down	Navigate command history
Page Up / Page Down	Scroll output (or help pager when open)
Home / End	Jump to top/bottom of scrollback (or help pager when open)
Shift+Right / Shift+Left	Navigate conversation entries
Escape	Dismiss conversation overlay or help pager
W / A / S / D	Move north/west/south/east (only when input is empty, after login)
F1	Toggle help overlay
Ctrl+C	Quit

UI layout

The UI has up to five regions:

• Output pane — main MUD text (filtered: speech, info, and map lines removed at scroll position 0)
• Stats pane — GMCP vitals/status/attributes (appears automatically when GMCP data arrives, 24-char column on the right)
• Map pane — fixed panel on the right side (below stats if both present) showing room name, coordinates, ASCII map, exits, and word-wrapped description (appears after login when map data is received)
• Help pager — scrollable overlay on the right side showing help content (appears when server sends {help} tags, covers stats/map panes)
• Info ticker — single-row bar above the input line showing INFO: channel messages
• Input line — command entry with > prompt

The conversation overlay draws on top of the output pane. The map pane is a fixed panel on the right side of the screen (below the stats pane if both are present), and is hidden while the conversation overlay is visible. Scrolling up reveals history with configurable content visibility — by default only conversation lines are included. Use /history to toggle what appears (conversations, help, maps, info).

Debug logging (-d or /debug) writes to mud_output.log, mud_proto.log, and mud_gmcp.log in the current directory.

Development

# Install in dev mode
uv sync

# Run via entry point
uv run mud-slop <host> <port>

# Run via python -m
uv run python -m mud_slop <host> <port>

The project has zero runtime dependencies. See CLAUDE.md for detailed architecture notes and the module dependency graph.

# Run tests
uv run python -m pytest tests/ -v

Releasing

Releases are fully automated via Release Please and GitHub Actions. The process is:

1. Use Conventional Commits in your commit messages:

   • fix: <description> — triggers a patch bump (e.g. 0.1.2 → 0.1.3)
   • feat: <description> — triggers a minor bump (e.g. 0.1.3 → 0.2.0)
   • feat!: <description> or a BREAKING CHANGE: footer — triggers a minor bump while pre-1.0

   Commits that don't follow this format (e.g. chore:, docs:, or no prefix) are ignored by Release Please and won't trigger a release.

2. Merge to main — on every push to main, Release Please analyzes new commits and opens (or updates) a release PR with a version bump and generated changelog.

3. Merge the release PR — this triggers the publish pipeline:

   • Builds the package with python -m build
   • Publishes to PyPI via trusted publishing
   • Uploads dist artifacts to the GitHub Release

Important: When merging PRs via GitHub, use "Squash and merge" and ensure the squash commit message follows conventional commits format (e.g. fix: profile not loading when installed from PyPI). GitHub defaults to using the branch name, which Release Please can't parse.