This is a Terminal App (TUI), just a bit of fun … and a bit experimental at this stage!
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Summary | A terminal UI for browsing and posting to Discourse forums with topic lists, full topic views, replies, likes, search, and a built‑in composer. |
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Repository Link | GitHub - merefield/termcourse: A terminal based client to access Discourse instances, supporting API keys, username/password (and with MFA token) · GitHub |
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Install Guide | README.md in the repo (Quickstart section) |
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Sponsorship | Please consider becoming an ongoing sponsor of my open source work (Sponsor @merefield on GitHub Sponsors · GitHub) at a level that suits your or your organisation’s resources and needs to ensure this project gets the maintenance it deserves and continues to work for your site in the future. |
Enjoying termcourse? Please 
it on GitHub
Overview
termcourse is a terminal-based Discourse client, rebuilt as a single Go executable. It can use a lightweight browser-style cookie session with username/email and password, including TOTP and backup-code MFA. API-key authentication is available for sites where interactive login is unsuitable.
The interface uses the current Charm stack and works with both keyboard and mouse. Its folder-style navigation, contextual filters, responsive panels, themed controls, Markdown rendering and inline images are designed to make browsing a forum comfortable without leaving the terminal.
Features
- Browse Latest, Hot, New, Unread, Top and Private Message topic lists, with Top period cycling.
- Navigate persistent Topics, Search, Notifications and Compose folders, with contextual second-level filters.
- Use the keyboard throughout, or click tabs, topic rows, footer controls and hover-highlighted buttons.
- Open visible topics with Enter or number keys
1–0. - Read complete topics with lazy post loading, compact excerpts, expanded selected posts and responsive scrolling.
- Click a topic’s progress track to jump directly to that point in the post stream.
- Create topics, choose categories, reply to topics or individual posts, and like or unlike posts.
- Search posts and jump directly to the matching post in its topic context.
- Browse and filter notifications, including unread and private-message badges.
- Compose multiline content with cursor movement, insertion, wrapping, paste support and live validation.
- Render GFM Markdown including links, lists, quotes, code, task lists and tables.
- Show high-quality inline and fullscreen images with the Kitty graphics protocol, with colored
chafasymbols orviuas portable fallbacks. - Receive realtime topic-list, topic, notification and private-message updates when using a cookie session.
- Use per-site credentials from the environment or
credentials.yml, with prompting for missing login fields. - Choose from
default,slate,fairground,rustandhackerthemes, add YAML themes, and cycle themes while the app is running. - Use truecolor, 256-color or 16-color output with automatic terminal capability detection.
- Run the interface in English, French, German or Spanish.
- Resize the terminal freely: layouts, colours, topic lists and Kitty images respond to the available space.
- See server-provided retry timing when Discourse rate limits an action, with optional HTTP, UI and image diagnostics.
Install and run
On Linux or macOS, the recommended installer downloads the prebuilt release for the current operating system and architecture, verifies its SHA-256 checksum and reported version, then installs it:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/merefield/termcourse/master/install-release.sh | sh
termcourse your.discourse.host
Termcourse prompts for a username and password when credentials have not already been configured. Password input is hidden.
Use termcourse --version to show the installed semantic version; the same version appears in the wide terminal masthead.
For a user-local installation that does not require sudo:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/merefield/termcourse/master/install-release.sh |
TERMCOURSE_BIN_DIR="$HOME/.local/bin" sh
Each GitHub Release provides SHA-256 checksums and prebuilt archives for Linux, macOS and Windows on AMD64 and ARM64. Linux/macOS use .tar.gz; Windows uses .zip. Prebuilt releases do not require Go.
On Windows, download and inspect the installer, then run it without changing the machine-wide execution policy:
Invoke-WebRequest https://raw.githubusercontent.com/merefield/termcourse/master/install-release.ps1 -OutFile install-release.ps1
powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\install-release.ps1
It installs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\termcourse\bin by default and performs the same checksum and version verification. The installers can also pin a release with --version or -Version. Go 1.26.6 or newer is only required when installing from source.
To build a local executable from a checkout instead:
git clone https://github.com/merefield/termcourse.git
cd termcourse
make build
./termcourse your.discourse.host
For repeat use, put login details in a local .env or use the per-host credentials.yml described in the README.
Username/password login (recommended)
Username/password login enables realtime updates:
DISCOURSE_USERNAME="you@example.com" \
DISCOURSE_PASSWORD="your_password" \
termcourse your.discourse.host
API-key fallback
DISCOURSE_API_KEY="your_key" \
DISCOURSE_API_USERNAME="your_username" \
termcourse your.discourse.host
See the latest README for configuration, themes, controls, image backends and troubleshooting.
Authentication notes
- Username/password login follows Discourse’s CSRF and cookie flow and enables realtime MessageBus updates.
- TOTP and backup-code MFA are supported.
- API-key authentication retains HTTP functionality but does not establish a realtime browser session.
- Some sites disable or restrict scripted username/password login; API credentials are the fallback for those sites.
Security
- Termcourse does not write prompted credentials or session cookies to disk; session cookies remain in memory.
- Password prompting keeps the password out of shell history.
- Persistent credentials are optional and remain under the user’s control in environment or YAML files.
- Diagnostic logging is opt-in, disabled by default, and does not log credentials or response bodies.
Limitations
- Sites that forbid remote login flows may require API-key authentication.
- Realtime updates require username/password cookie authentication.
- Native inline image quality depends on terminal support; Kitty is preferred, with symbol rendering available elsewhere.
- It lives in the terminal.
Credits
Partly inspired by Dumbcourse: old browser friendly UI at dumb/d-pad/small screens. 
updates:
… but there are of course some significant differences in medium so some things might remain different.