Terminalwire was created in 2024 after Brad Gessler thought for about a year, “Why is it so hard to build command-line apps? Is there something like Hotwire, but for terminal apps?”

It all came together when he wanted TinyZap to have a command-line interface to create links to use on social media. In a classic case of a developer needing better tools, he spent a few weeks building out a prototype to see if it would work and guess what? It worked!

Turns out lots of developers also run into this problem and Terminalwire was born. Since link-shortners don’t make enough revenue to pay the bills, Brad turned his attention towards Terminalwire after discovering developers need this tool in a commercial context for everything from internal tooling to building out command-line applications for customers.

As a project, the goal for Terminalwire will be to provide a simple, easy-to-use, and powerful framework for building command-line applications. It will be free, in some capacity, for personal use, and will have a commercial license for businesses who use it to make money.