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formicarium

Getting started

Choose a tool on the Tools page. Each tool page opens a terminal, places a small sample project in /work/app and installs the tool before the prompt appears. The status line above the terminal tells you what is happening (isolation, loading, installing, ready, running or an error).

The empty terminal starts with only nano installed. Type install aube, install pitchfork, install biome, install nano or install jj, then run the tool, for example biome --version.

Commands

Section titled “Commands”
  • ls [path], cat path, cd path, rm -rf path, cp [-r] src dst and mv src dst are built in.
  • clear empties the terminal and its scrollback in the page; no command runs.
  • install <tool> installs a tool of the showcase catalog. Only the accepted versions listed on the Tools page can be installed.
  • Any other first word runs the installed tool of that name.
  • A tool the catalog marks for every page (nano) is installed quietly when any terminal page starts, so it is there from the start and other tools can open it too: jj describe without -m opens nano to edit the description.

There is no shell: pipes, redirections, $ expansion and globbing are refused with INVALID_INPUT. One line is limited to 65536 bytes. Use ↑ and ↓ for the history of this page, Ctrl-L to clear the screen while keeping the typed line, and Ctrl-C to cancel a running command or install (except an interactive tool, below). Tab and Shift+Tab move the focus out of the terminal.

A tool marked interactive in the catalog takes the keyboard while it runs: every key, Enter and Ctrl-C included, goes to the tool, which sees a terminal of the size the page’s terminal has when the tool starts (it does not follow later resizes). A Stop button below the terminal ends the run (ABORTED).

Limits

Section titled “Limits”
  • Nothing is saved. Reloading or leaving the page discards the session.
  • Guests have no network access, and package lifecycle scripts do not run.
  • Very long output is trimmed on screen (1 MiB or 10000 lines); a note below the terminal says how much was omitted.

Browser requirements

Section titled “Browser requirements”

The terminal needs a secure context, SharedArrayBuffer and cross-origin isolation. GitHub Pages cannot send the COOP/COEP headers, so a service worker (coi-serviceworker.js) adds them and reloads the terminal page once. If your browser blocks service workers, allow them for this site and reload. The documentation pages and the Tools page never load the terminal or a guest.