Conch — a shell simulator for Typst | Typst | Page 1

light pendant Apr 8, 2026, 12:45 PM

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Just built conch — a shell simulator for Typst: you write terminal-style sessions in .typ, it runs on a virtual FS (Rust WASM) and renders a terminal with colors / ANSI / animation. Three layers: frame only, ANSI only, or full shell (pipes, redirects, lots of unix-y commands).

Now supports keyboard events (left/right/home/end/backspace/ctrl-c) and is compatible with touying!

Now on Universe — https://typst.app/universe/package/conch
Source & demos: https://github.com/lucifer1004/conch
Feedback welcome, especially weird command edge cases.

Typst

conch – Typst Universe

Simulate a shell and render terminal sessions in documents.

GitHub

GitHub - lucifer1004/conch: A shell simulator for Typst

A shell simulator for Typst. Contribute to lucifer1004/conch development by creating an account on GitHub.

wintry crater Apr 8, 2026, 4:27 PM

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Very cool!

placid apex Apr 8, 2026, 4:54 PM

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11/10 name

light pendant Apr 8, 2026, 5:29 PM

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verbal copper Apr 8, 2026, 6:46 PM

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Now embed a linux vm in it, install typst and run the package there again

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Literally typst inception

safe field Apr 9, 2026, 12:58 AM

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what's the point of this

light pendant Apr 9, 2026, 1:08 AM

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safe field what's the point of this

I have shown one use case above: showing terminal demos in slides

safe field Apr 9, 2026, 2:08 AM

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it's plastic around highlight syntax, isn't it?

light pendant Apr 9, 2026, 2:18 AM

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safe field it's plastic around highlight syntax, isn't it?

The point is that you only need the commands and the result can be simulated within Typst

safe field Apr 9, 2026, 2:20 AM

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okay

safe field Apr 9, 2026, 2:43 AM

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Is it possible to get rid off the GUI and just get the raw output?

safe field Apr 9, 2026, 3:42 AM

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but yea looks pretty cool tbh

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especially i didnt know typst would allow animations ?

light pendant Apr 9, 2026, 4:44 AM

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safe field Is it possible to get rid off the GUI and just get the raw output?

Yes, feature added in latest commit

light pendant Apr 9, 2026, 4:45 AM

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safe field especially i didnt know typst would allow animations ?

Gif is concatted via ffmpeg

radiant sphinx Apr 9, 2026, 10:51 PM

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This is amazing

light pendant Apr 10, 2026, 5:41 AM

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lean raptor Apr 10, 2026, 9:04 AM

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Looks very cool.

Is there a way I could add my own "commands"? I guess that should use callbacks to given Typst functions that could simulate the output of commands I need.

brisk knot Apr 11, 2026, 6:49 AM

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Consider adding a feature to generate RUNME.sh as attachment which I can download and bash RUNME.sh > RUNME.sh.out and your code reads RUNME.sh.out to ensure all "simulated" outputs truly reflect execution results on the current machine

light pendant Apr 11, 2026, 7:17 AM

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brisk knot Consider adding a feature to generate RUNME.sh as attachment which I can downloa...

Full equivalence is impossible due to the limitation of WASM sandboxes.

grand fern Apr 11, 2026, 6:40 PM

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light pendant

This would have rocked during my Linux OS labs

light pendant Apr 12, 2026, 4:42 AM

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lean raptor Looks very cool. Is there a way I could add my own "commands"? I guess that sho...

It now supports nearly full Bash script features, so you can define your own tool via bash scripting.

brisk knot Apr 13, 2026, 2:24 AM

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Taking inspiration from your work...

light pendant Apr 13, 2026, 5:02 PM

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brisk knot Taking inspiration from your work...

Great! You can also have a look at my latest updates. Conch now supports full Bash grammar, plus WASM and Typst plugins.

grand fern Apr 14, 2026, 6:27 PM

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@light pendant How can I set terminal-frame user and sytem

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I just want to render my listings

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This but in the terminal tho

light pendant Apr 14, 2026, 11:33 PM

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grand fern <@435613626137706526> How can I set terminal-frame user and sytem

#show: terminal.with(
  system: system(
    hostname: "conch",
  ),
  user: "demo",
)

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user and system can be directly set initially, and the user can be changed within the script with su

grand fern Apr 15, 2026, 10:12 AM

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light pendant ```typst #show: terminal.with( system: system( hostname: "conch", ), u...

I just need the terminal frame

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Just the looks

light pendant Apr 15, 2026, 10:13 AM

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#terminal-frame(title: "cargo build", theme: "dracula")[
  \$ cargo build --release \
  Compiling my-app v0.1.0 \
  Finished release target(s) in 3.2s
]

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Then you are free to write your own

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Color can be done with ANSI:

#terminal-frame(title: "test results", theme: "catppuccin")[
  #render-ansi(
    "\u{1b}[1;32mPASSED\u{1b}[0m test_new\n\u{1b}[1;31mFAILED\u{1b}[0m test_pipe",
    theme: "catppuccin",
  )
]

grand fern Apr 15, 2026, 10:22 AM

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That will take soo long

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I have so many listings

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Is there a way I can define the system and user and still have a way to render the listing

grand fern Apr 15, 2026, 10:27 AM

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light pendant ``` #terminal-frame(title: "cargo build", theme: "dracula")[ \$ cargo build --...

?

grand fern Apr 15, 2026, 10:30 AM

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light pendant ``` #terminal-frame(title: "cargo build", theme: "dracula")[ \$ cargo build --...

I am just requesting you to consider a way to define a user and system argument for the terminal frame too

light pendant Apr 15, 2026, 10:50 AM

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You can simply wrap your listing with a custom function that adds the prefix

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And actually, for custom listing, the terminal-frame function is unable to know which lines should have the prompt.

grand fern Apr 15, 2026, 2:57 PM

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light pendant And actually, for custom listing, the terminal-frame function is unable to know ...

Please consider it as an addition for the nex version please

light pendant Apr 15, 2026, 3:01 PM

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grand fern Please consider it as an addition for the nex version please

I do not have idea how to add this function: it is not as simple as adding the prompt for every line. Some of your lines might be terminal output, instead of input!

grand fern Apr 19, 2026, 5:22 PM

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light pendant I do not have idea how to add this function: it is not as simple as adding the p...

  ace@zen:~/BDA/exp_8$ hadoop jar $HADOOP_HOME/share/hadoop/tools/lib/hadoop-streaming-*.jar \
  -files mapper.py,reducer.py,centroids.txt \
  -input /exp_8/input.txt \
  -output /exp_8/output \
  -mapper mapper.py \
  -reducer reducer.py

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I will provide the entire terminal listing

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I just want the commands to be highlighted

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and my user and system

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with other syntactic surgar if possible within the frame

#Conch — a shell simulator for Typst