Hi everyone!
I’ve been working on rootle, a modal source-code browser built with Rust and Ratatui.
The idea is simple: sometimes you just want to find an implementation, read a file, or inspect a commit in a repository you don’t have checked out.
rootle lets you do that from the terminal, without cloning the repository first.
The interface takes inspiration from Yazi’s Miller-column navigation and Zed’s search UI, with Vim-style modal controls.
A few things it can do:
- Browse repositories and file trees with live Tree-sitter syntax highlighting.
- Find files and grep code, with streaming results, filters, and expandable file previews.
- Switch branches and tags, explore history and blame, and inspect syntax-highlighted commit diffs.
- Open files read-only in your editor or copy links to the relevant source lines.
- Clone through a wizard when you actually want a local checkout.
GitHub support is built in. GitLab and Bitbucket are available through external providers, and the provider interface uses JSON-RPC over stdio—so adapters can be written in other languages too. Search availability depends on the backend and its credentials/capabilities.
It’s a source browser rather than a replacement for Git: the focus is exploring and understanding remote code, not staging changes or managing pull requests.
You can try it with:
cargo install rootle
rootle ratatui/ratatui
Prebuilt Linux/macOS binaries and Homebrew installation instructions are on the website.
- Website, demo, and docs: https://rootle.dev
- Source: GitHub - rootledev/rootle: rootle — browse remote source-control systems from your terminal (modal ratatui TUI) · GitHub
It’s still alpha, and I’d love feedback from people who build and use TUIs—especially on navigation, focus, and whether the search/browse workflow feels natural.
Thanks to the Ratatui community for the foundation!