NAQSH
A Designer's Terminal Emulator
Terminals are where developers live, yet most look like an afterthought. Naqsh (Urdu for 'inscription') is a borderless terminal emulator with a designer's eye — quiet typography by default, with an optional CRT vignette, scanlines and per-character phosphor glow when you want the showmanship.
Origin Story
I wanted a terminal that was beautiful by default but never got in the way — restraint first, theatre on request.
How It's Built
Built on xterm.js for full ANSI/VT support over a Rust portable-pty backend, with tabs, splits, ligatures, image paste and shell auto-detection — then packaged for the Microsoft Store.
Engineering Notes
xterm.js over a Rust PTY
Full ANSI/VT, 24-bit truecolour, Unicode, mouse and bracketed paste come from xterm.js 6 running over a Rust portable-pty backend, with shell auto-detection across pwsh, cmd, WSL, bash, zsh and fish. It's a real terminal, not a toy.
Designer details
Tabs, splits and drag-to-resize panes sit under an optional CRT layer — vignette, scanlines and per-character phosphor glow keyed to your palette — plus curated themes and ligatures. It's packaged as MSIX for the Microsoft Store at around a 10MB binary.
Gallery
Naqsh is proof that developer tools deserve design too — quiet typography, with the showmanship saved for when you actually want it.
What It Does
Designer Aesthetic
Curated themes, ligatures and an optional CRT layer — vignette, scanlines, per-character glow keyed to your palette.
Real Layout
Tabs, horizontal and vertical splits, drag-to-resize panes, and a keyboard-first zen mode.
Full Terminal
xterm.js ANSI/VT, 24-bit truecolour, Unicode, mouse and bracketed paste — even image paste.
Native & Light
A roughly 10MB Tauri / Rust binary, MSIX-packaged and Store-ready.
Where It Stands
Naqsh is polished and MSIX-packaged for the Microsoft Store at around a 10MB binary. With splits, ligatures, image paste and the CRT layer already in, the next move is wider platform distribution.
Naqsh is Tauri 2 with a Rust backend (portable-pty, sysinfo) and a React 19 + xterm.js 6 front end on Vite and Tailwind, packaged as MSIX for the Microsoft Store. It is featured in my CV alongside Andhera.