webterm

webterm serves terminal sessions over HTTP/WebSocket, with a dashboard mode for multiple sessions and live-updating terminal tiles.

This repository is the Go port of the original Python implementation, which is preserved in the python branch.

Features

• Typeahead find for quickly finding and launching sessions with minimal friction
• Web terminal with reconnect support
• Ghostty WebAssembly terminal engine for fast rendering from ghostty-web
• Session dashboard with live SVG screenshots from go-te
• Docker watch mode (webterm-command / webterm-theme labels)
• Docker compose manifest ingestion
• CPU sparkline tiles for compose services
• SSE activity updates for fast dashboard refresh
• Mobile/touch support with virtual keyboard + draggable keybar
• Theme/font controls for terminal rendering
• Vendored Nerd Font assets with full glyph/icon support (no external font fetch required)

Install

Quick install

go install github.com/rcarmo/webterm/cmd/webterm@latest

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/rcarmo/webterm.git
cd webterm
mkdir -p bin
go build -o ./bin/webterm ./cmd/webterm

The command above produces bin/webterm; you can also build it from repo root with make build-go.

Quick start

Run a default shell session:

go run ./cmd/webterm

Run a specific command:

go run ./cmd/webterm -- htop

Then open http://localhost:8080.

Dashboard modes

Landing manifest

- name: Logs
  slug: logs
  command: docker logs -f my-service
  theme: nord

go run ./cmd/webterm -- --landing-manifest ./landing.yaml

Docker watch

go run ./cmd/webterm -- --docker-watch

Containers with these labels become tiles:

• webterm-command: command string, or auto for Docker exec
• webterm-theme: theme name (fallback is xterm palette)

Compose manifest

go run ./cmd/webterm -- --compose-manifest ./docker-compose.yaml

Environment variables

• WEBTERM_STATIC_PATH: override static asset directory
• WEBTERM_DOCKER_USERNAME: user for Docker exec sessions
• WEBTERM_DOCKER_AUTO_COMMAND: override auto command (/bin/bash default)
• WEBTERM_SCREENSHOT_FORCE_REDRAW: force redraw before screenshots (true/1/yes/on)
• DOCKER_HOST: Docker daemon endpoint override

Development (Makefile-first)

make install-dev
make check
make race
make test
make bump-patch

Frontend bundle tasks:

make build
make build-fast
make bundle-watch

Docker

docker build -t webterm .
docker run -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -p 8080:8080 webterm --docker-watch

Web assets are embedded in the Go binary by default (you can still override with WEBTERM_STATIC_PATH). The Dockerfile uses a minimal Alpine runtime stage and only installs ca-certificates plus docker-cli.