pyghostty

Unofficial (but complete) python bindings for libghostty-vt. libghostty is Ghostty's embeddable terminal emulation core, a headless, high-fidelity VT emulator for Python. These bindings cover terminal state, screen and scrollback snapshots, kitty graphics, and everything else Ghostty's production terminal core handles.

The binding is Python-ABI-independent: pure Python (cffi ABI mode) over a bundled libghostty-vt shared library, so one wheel per platform covers every Python version. No compiler is needed at install time.

Usage

from pyghostty import Terminal

with Terminal(cols=80, rows=24) as t:
    t.feed('hello\r\nworld')
    t.cursor      # (x, y), 0-indexed
    t.text()      # plain text of the visible screen only
    t.contents()  # everything: scrollback plus screen, soft-wraps unwrapped
    t.resize(120, 24)  # reflows the primary screen

The base layer, pyghostty._cdef/_ffi, exposes the complete generated C API as raw ffi/lib (regenerate with gen_cdef.py after moving the pinned ghostty rev).

pyghostty.core.Terminal provides an ergonomic wrapper for commonly used parts.

Building the library

Source installs, including editable installs, build the shared library automatically. The build fetches the pinned Ghostty revision into build/ghostty/<revision>/ and uses the Zig toolchain supplied by the package's build dependencies. Git and network access are needed for the first build; later builds reuse the checkout and Zig's compilation cache. A sibling Ghostty checkout is not needed.

To build from an existing checkout instead:

GHOSTTY_SRC=/path/to/ghostty python build_lib.py

The checkout must be at the revision pinned in pyproject.toml; the build never changes it. Running build_lib.py directly requires the pinned ziglang version in your Python environment. This runs zig build -Demit-lib-vt=true and copies the resulting shared library into pyghostty/_lib/.

Development

pip install -e .[dev]
pytest -q

After changing the Ghostty pin, reinstall the editable package (ws-sync does this in a uv workspace). After changing a checkout supplied with GHOSTTY_SRC, rerun build_lib.py. Regenerate _cdef.py with gen_cdef.py when updating the pinned revision.

Versioning

Version lives in pyghostty/__init__.py as __version__.

Releases

Pushing a v* tag runs .github/workflows/release.yml, which builds and tests one Python-ABI-independent wheel for each supported platform and publishes the wheels to GitHub and PyPI. Releases are wheel-only; source remains available from the corresponding GitHub tag.