Like many developers, I loved the idea of having a blog but hated the idea of having a blog that looked like everyone else’s. Then I started daily driving Ghostty and everything changed.
The Ghostty Inspiration
Ghostty isn’t just another terminal emulator; it’s a love letter to terminal aesthetics done right. Clean, fast, and beautiful. I wanted to be in the terminal. Why would I be somewhere else? I am more efficent and happier here. So when it came time to think about rebooting my blog (a yearly exercise) I found myself looking through hugo themes and wishing I was better at frontend work. Given that I’d been spending a lot of time in nvim and TUIs recently and I had an idea; a theme that was a terminal.
Making It Real
Having the idea was one thing, but actually building it required some help. Continue cn (our CLI tool, yes a shameless plug) with Claude under the hood, helped make this vision real.
The combination of Hugo’s speed and the Risotto theme got me 90% there, but the personal touches that make it feel authentic made all the difference. I forked Risotto and created the Arancini theme.
Why Terminal UI Works
Terminal UIs just work:
- Clarity: No visual clutter distracts from content
- Speed: Fast loading, minimal resources needed
- Focus: Typography and content take center stage
- Efficiency: Every element serves a purpose
- Consistency: Predictable patterns across all interfaces
$ ls ~/favorite_tools/ ghostty # The terminal that started it all continue # Our CLI that helped make this real neovim. # Editor that inspired the post navigator starship # Prompt tool that inspired the footer atuin # Making your shell magical nord # It really tied the room together
The Color Story: Base16 + Nord
The visual foundation comes from two systems that just work together beautifully:
Base16 provides the architecture. A consistent way to define color schemes across different applications. Chris Kempson’s system maps semantic meaning to colors, so your terminal, editor, and now your blog can all speak the same visual language.
Nord provides the palette. Those beautiful frost blues and aurora greens that make everything feel cohesive. It’s the same colors in my terminal, my editor, and now this blog. When everything uses the same base16 Nord theme, your entire development environment feels integrated.
The consistency is what makes it work. When I switch between my terminal, nvim, and this blog, the colors flow seamlessly. It’s like having one beautifully integrated workspace instead of a collection of mismatched tools.
The details make me happy
- Starship-inspired footer showing git status and social links like terminal prompt modules
- Neovim-style post navigator with file trees inspired by midnight commander and other TUI file explorers
- Dynamic blog listing that feels like running
lson your recent posts (this made me unreasonably happy) - Base16 color consistency so everything flows together
Why This Matters
We spend our days in terminals, editors, and command lines that we’ve carefully configured to be beautiful and functional. Our personal websites should reflect that same care and aesthetic sensibility.
We configure our terminals and editors to look good. Why not our blogs too? When everything uses the same base16 colors, it all feels like one workspace instead of a bunch of random tools.
Writing posts in nvim with Nord colors and then viewing them in a browser with the same colors just feels right. No context switching.
Just a Demo (That You Can Use)
All the code for this blog is open source. The customizations, the theme modifications, the terminal-style components. Everything is available to fork and make your own.
This started as “just a demo” and now it’s my actual home on the web. Fork it, make it better, share what you build.