[bob1029]

I genuinely don't understand the TUI obsession for LLM applications.

Go watch copilot drive VS2026 if you've never seen it in action. There is no way you are going to be able to communicate this same amount of information via plain text in the same amount of time. I can catch a lot of bad stuff mid-flight because I can actually multitask my UI and click into diffs as files are edited in real time.

[MrJohz]

I don't use VSCode as my editor, but I found out recently you can open the AI agent sidebar as a separate window, and it's been fantastic - it's mostly replaced Claude Code and other similar TUI tools. It's not quite full integration, but the UI is so much easier to use, because you can be more precise. Rather than having a global "more information" toggle that expands everything like in Claude Code or Pi or whatever, I can specifically inspect the bits of information that I'm interested in. There's two parallel subagents running and one of them is doing unusual things? I can explore exactly what it's doing in more detail.

It helps that VSCode has really improved in the last couple of releases - before then, the features available in Claude Code were useful though that it was worth using despite the baggage, and there's still a handful of things I miss in VSCode. But I think the visual information density and acuity that you can get out of a GUI application is far beyond what you can ever achieve in a TUI, and I think as these tools start reaching something like feature parity, that makes GUIs a lot nicer to use.

[nip]

The reason is simple: the TUI is the fastest way to provide any form of UI over the file system.

Want to do that with web technologies? You’ll need a browser AND a server or build an app using electron or tauri.

[bob1029]

I don't disagree. However, the TUI seems to have become the final destination for some major AI vendors. This doesn't look like a stepping stone to me.

[r0b05]

I have been wondering where this trend started as well. It's geared towards vibe coders who don't need to see a lot of info.

[esafak]

How fast does it need to be? We're talking about LLMs that run in the cloud here.

[ahzhou]

Fast as in time-to-market

[Marazan]

It's LARPing.

Everyone knows all the best programmers are using the command line firing off one line Awk scripts that look like runic incantations occasionally opening vim to do stuff at blazing warp speed.

So the AI tools people build want to take on those trappings to convince people they are serious tools for grown ups.

Ignore that they are basically a full web stack React/CSS conglomeration - feel the L33t hackerness of 'using the command line'. No IDE like a scrub developer you are using a text console, you are a real programmer now.

[anthk]

Actual hackers will use AWK and anything else... over Acme under 9front which is pretty much graphical, and current Emacs users will use a graphical setup with tons of keybindings, commands and Elisp functions. The best of both worlds. You have both the scriptability, keyboard shortcuts and mouse for selection and quick pointng.

[madeofpalk]

Yeah. I prefer the smarts of Claude code, but the GitHub copilot UI in vs code is much better, especially for previewing ai diffs.

I was (am) excited for vs codes new native Claude code integration, but it’s pretty buggy and unreliable.