boo
boo is a GNU screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty for accurate redraws and headless automation.
If your pain is a screen session that redraws wrong after a modern TUI has been running detached, boo attacks exactly that and fixes it. The send/peek/wait trio with JSON output and clean exit codes also makes it one of the more scriptable multiplexers around — polling with sleep loops stops being necessary. It is not a tmux replacement: come for accuracy and headless automation, not panes.
Verified 15d ago · liveness 65/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/boo
- Developers and sysadmins who need persistent sessions that survive disconnects with accurate redraws
- CI/CD pipelines running interactive commands that require a correct terminal state and non-hanging behavior
- Scripts and AI agents driving interactive programs headlessly via send, peek, wait, and JSON output
- GNU screen users whose output gets mangled by modern TUIs and who want the same model with a modern VT core
- tmux users who need window splitting, panes, and layouts in a single view
- Teams depending on a mature plugin ecosystem or a heavily customized status bar
- Anyone needing built-in session sharing or pair-programming features
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Skip boo if you rely on tmux-style pane splitting, need advanced session sharing or a mature plugin ecosystem, or require a full-featured multiplexer with extensive configuration.
boo is completely free, open-source (MIT licensed). There are no paid tiers or hidden costs. It's a no-brainer for anyone who wants a modern screen alternative without spending a dime.
In short
boo — boo is a GNU screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty for accurate redraws and headless automation. Best for Developers and sysadmins who need persistent sessions that survive disconnects with accurate redraws, CI/CD pipelines running interactive commands that require a correct terminal state and non-hanging behavior, Scripts and AI agents driving interactive programs headlessly via send, peek, wait, and JSON output. Free to use.
What people actually say about boo — is it worth it?
We scanned public community sources for boo on Jun 18, 2026 and could not establish that the discussion we found is about this tool rather than something else sharing its name. Our own analysis of that scan says the posts were off-subject. Rather than publish a sentiment score built on the wrong subject, we publish nothing here and re-run the scan.
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is boo? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: September 2026
How we score →Key Features
- GNU screen-style terminal multiplexer built on libghostty-vt and written in Zig
- Session detach and reattach with Ctrl-A d (also C-a C-d)
- Full-screen session manager boo ui with sidebar for switching, resizing, creating, and killing sessions
- Faithful redraws reconstructed from libghostty terminal state, including SGR styles, cursor position, scrolling
- Headless automation commands (send, peek, wait) usable without a TTY
- wait --text blocks until screen contains text; wait --idle fires after 2 seconds of quiet
- wait --timeout with durations like 500ms, 2s, 1m, 4h, 1d; exits 4 instead of hanging
- send --text is literal: no escape processing, no implicit newline; --enter submits and --key names control keys
- Binary-safe stdin mode for sending input
- peek prints the reconstructed screen; --scrollback includes history and --json adds size, cursor, and title
- Machine-readable output: boo ls --json and boo peek --json
- Exit codes: 0 success, 1 error, 2 usage error, 3 no such session, 4 wait timed out
- Terminal queries answered while detached so TUIs don't hang unattended
- Session naming defaults to current directory with process-id fallback when the name is taken
- Pre-built Linux and macOS binaries plus curl install script; build from source with Zig 0.15.2 or Nix
About boo
boo is a free, open-source terminal multiplexer that keeps GNU screen's session model but swaps in Ghostty's terminal emulation core. Written in Zig and built on libghostty-vt, every session's output runs through a modern VT parser, so the saved state — screen contents, SGR styles, cursor position, scrollback, scrolling regions, window title, terminal modes — matches what a real terminal would actually show. It targets developers and sysadmins who want persistent sessions, plus scripts and AI agents that need to drive interactive programs without a live TTY. The everyday workflow is screen-familiar: boo new starts a session running $SHELL, boo attach work reattaches, and Ctrl-A d detaches (the C-a C-d variant works too). boo ui opens a full-screen session manager with a sidebar for switching, resizing, creating, and killing sessions, while boo ls lists them and boo rename relabels one. With no name, boo names the session after the current directory, falling back to the process id when that name is taken. Automation is where boo diverges from screen. Everything except attach runs without a terminal, so the canonical headless loop is boo new build -d -- bash, then boo send build --text 'make' --enter, boo wait build --idle, and boo peek build --scrollback. peek prints the reconstructed screen rather than a raw byte log, and --json adds size, cursor, and title; ls --json does the same for session lists. wait blocks on --text or until output is idle for 2 seconds, with --timeout exiting 4 instead of hanging; send is literal (no escape processing, no implicit newline) and its stdin mode is binary safe. Compared with tmux, boo deliberately solves a different problem: no panes, no plugin ecosystem, just sessions, a prefix key, and boo ui to juggle them. Against GNU screen, the pitch is accuracy — screen's decades-old emulator drops or mangles what modern programs emit, while boo's libghostty-vt state stays faithful and answers terminal queries while detached so TUIs
Behind the Verdict
Pick boo when a long-running interactive process has to survive a disconnect and still look correct when you come back. Ghostty's VT core means styles, cursor, scrolling regions, and the window title are reconstructed on attach, and terminal queries get answered while you're away — the thing that most often leaves an unattended TUI frozen. In practice this is the upgrade path for anyone who has watched GNU screen mangle a modern app's output. Pick it just as readily when something other than a human is driving the terminal. Everything except attach works headless, so a CI job or an agent can create a detached session, type into it literally, wait for output to settle, and read the reconstructed screen as JSON. The exit-code contract (0 success, 1 error, 2 usage, 3 no such session, 4 timeout) means your scripts can branch on failure instead of grepping for strings. The obvious pass is anyone who lives in tmux panes. boo keeps screen's single-session-per-task model on purpose; there is no splitting and no plugin system, and boo ui is a session switchboard, not a window layout engine. If your workflow is four shells side by side with a status bar full of plugins, this will feel like a step back, not forward. Two other things worth knowing before you commit. Installation is a curl-piped shell script or a pre-built release binary, so teams with locked-down or air-gapped machines should plan around fetching and verifying it themselves. And the model is one session per task: if you keep a dozen concurrent projects, expect to lean on boo ui and session naming rather than a single multiplexed workspace. Day-to-day, the commands are close enough to screen that muscle memory transfers — Ctrl-A d, C-a l to redraw, C-a a for a literal Ctrl-A. Where it bites is only when you
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas boo actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
SSH into a server, start a long-running build, detach, and reconnect later to see the exact same screen state.
Outcome: Persistent session survives disconnects, and the screen renders correctly thanks to libghostty accuracy.
Create a headless session to run an interactive test suite, send commands, wait for output to settle, and peek the screen to verify results.
Outcome: Automation loop completes with precise exit codes and JSON output, enabling reliable integration into pipelines.
Use boo to let an AI agent interact with a terminal-based application, reading the screen state exactly as a human would.
Outcome: Agent can make decisions based on accurate terminal output, improving reliability of autonomous workflows.
Use Cases
- Persist terminal sessions across network disconnects while working remotely
- Reattach to a session and see exactly the same screen state as when detached
- Automate terminal monitoring by parsing accurate screen content
- Build AI agents that can read and interact with terminal output predictably
Limitations
- boo is an early-stage open-source project, so documentation may be limited.
- It lacks tmux-style pane splitting and window management, and it doesn't have a plugin ecosystem.
- Pre-built binaries are available only for Linux and macOS; Windows users would need to build from source.
as of 2026-08-29
Verification history
We have re-verified boo 12 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 12 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published boo tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free (open source, MIT)
$0
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where boo's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
boo is completely free, open-source (MIT licensed). There are no paid tiers or hidden costs. It's a no-brainer for anyone who wants a modern screen alternative without spending a dime.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of boo — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Install via curl script: under a minute. Creating a session and learning basic commands (new, install, attach) takes about 5 minutes. Full automation setup with send, peek, wait can be done in under 30 minutes.
Switching to or from boo
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From GNU screen: Run 'boo new' to create a session instead of 'screen -S', use Ctrl-A d to detach, and 'boo attach' to reattach. The keybindings are nearly identical, so migration is quick.
- ↗To tmux: Create a new tmux session with 'tmux new -s myname', use Ctrl-b d to detach, and 'tmux attach -t myname' to reattach. tmux offers panes and plugins beyond boo's simpler model.
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “boo”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “boo” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about boo.
Official links
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Boo vs Spider Cloud
Spider Cloud and boo serve entirely different needs: Spider Cloud is a web scraping API for AI data pipelines, while boo is a terminal multiplexer. There is no direct competition. Choose Spider Cloud if you need structured web data for agents or RAG; choose boo for persistent terminal sessions. They are complementary, not substitutes.
Boo vs Temporal Ai
Temporal AI and boo solve entirely different problems. Temporal is a heavy-duty durable execution platform for building fault-tolerant AI agents and multi-step workflows – ideal for teams that need crash resilience and full visibility. boo is a lightweight terminal multiplexer for managing persistent shell sessions, best for developers and scripts that need reliable terminal automation without the overhead of tmux or screen. Choose Temporal for robust orchestration, boo for session management.
Boo vs Audioeye
boo and AudioEye serve completely different needs. If you're a developer needing persistent terminal sessions or headless automation, boo is free and purpose-built. If you're an enterprise facing ADA/WCAG compliance deadlines or legal risk, AudioEye provides automated scanning, human audits, and VPAT documentation, but at a cost. Choose based on your domain: terminal vs. accessibility.
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