Every example is a complete program you can build and run. Each one lives in its own directory under example/, with a README that says how to run it. Most of them are one zig build run. CI compiles all 29 C examples, so they can't fall behind the API.

If you want to see everything working together, start with Ghostling. It's a minimal but complete terminal built on libghostty-vt.

If you only want to read a terminal's screen, start with c-vt-stream.

Start Here

Example	What it does
c-vt-hello	The smallest complete program: create a terminal, write text with a color sequence in it, and print the screen. This is the program on the main page.
c-vt-stream	Feed VT sequences into a terminal, read the final screen back as plain text, and draw it with a render state. Start here for read-only tools like replay viewers and CI log viewers.
c-vt-formatter	Write text and cursor movement into a terminal, then stream the screen to stdout as plain text through a GhosttyWriter.

Terminal

Example	What it does	Guide
c-vt-colors	Set the default colors and palette, then read effective and default values as an OSC 10 override layers on top.	Colors
c-vt-effects	Register callbacks for what a program asks of the terminal: pty replies, the bell, title changes, OSC 52 clipboard reads and writes, and unknown sequences. You need these as soon as a real program runs in the terminal.	Effects
c-vt-compression	Compress scrollback while the terminal is idle.	Scrollback
c-vt-snapshot	Encode a terminal's full state and restore it three ways: in one shot, with scrollback kept compressed, and page by page. The page by page path gives you a terminal you can draw before the old history arrives.	Snapshots
c-vt-grid-traverse	Walk the whole grid cell by cell with grid refs, reading codepoints, row wrap state and styles.	The Grid
c-vt-grid-ref-tracked	Keep a reference to one cell while the terminal scrolls under it.	The Grid
c-vt-render	Draw a frame from a render state: check what's dirty, walk the rows and cells, and read styles, colors, the cursor and the selection. Use this when you render the terminal yourself.	Rendering
c-vt-search	Search the terminal for a string, step through the matches like a find bar, and read the viewport matches to draw highlights.	Search
c-vt-selection	Select a word, a line, a command's output or the whole screen, then format each selection as text. The line and output selections use OSC 133 prompt markers.	Selection
c-vt-selection-gesture	Feed press, drag, release and deep press events to ghostty_selection_gesture_event() and get back selections you can show or copy.	Selection
c-vt-kitty-graphics	Accept images sent with the Kitty Graphics Protocol and find out what to draw. It installs a stand-in PNG decoder, reads placements from the render state, and plays an animation.	Images

Input

Example	What it does	Guide
c-vt-encode-key	Encode Ctrl+C as an escape sequence with the Kitty keyboard protocol.	Input
c-vt-encode-mouse	Encode a left button press at a pixel position as an SGR mouse sequence.	Input
c-vt-encode-focus	Encode a focus gained event as CSI I, for programs that turn on focus reporting (mode 1004).	Input
c-vt-paste	Paste into a terminal with ghostty_terminal_paste(): plain text, bracketed paste (mode 2004), the unsafe-paste confirmation, and Kitty paste events (mode 5522). It also checks paste safety and encodes paste data without a terminal.	Input

Building Blocks

Example	What it does	Guide
c-vt-osc	Parse an OSC sequence and read the window title out of it.
c-vt-sgr	Parse SGR sequences into text attributes, including a real one from Kakoune with a curly underline and RGB colors.
c-vt-modes	Pack DEC and ANSI mode numbers into a GhosttyMode and encode a DECRPM report.
c-vt-color-scheme	Encode a color scheme report, the reply to a CSI ? 996 n query.	Colors
c-vt-size-report	Encode an in-band size report (mode 2048) from the grid and cell size.
c-vt-allocator	Run a terminal on your own allocator, built on malloc and free. It counts live bytes to check that the terminal frees everything.
c-vt-build-info	Query build options like SIMD and Kitty graphics, then check that the loaded library matches the headers you compiled against.

Build Systems

Example	What it does
c-vt-cmake	Build and link libghostty-vt from a CMake project with FetchContent.
c-vt-cmake-static	Build and statically link libghostty-vt from a CMake project with FetchContent.
c-vt-cmake-cross	Cross-compile and statically link libghostty-vt from CMake with ghostty_vt_add_target(). The default target is a different OS from your host.
c-vt-static	Statically link libghostty-vt from a Zig build with the ghostty-vt-static artifact. The program is the same as c-vt-osc.

Other Languages

These aren't C, so they have no page here. Each link goes to the directory in the repo.

Example	Language	What it does
zig-vt	Zig	Create a terminal with the ghostty-vt Zig module, write text that wraps at 6 columns, and print the screen as plain text.
zig-vt-stream	Zig	Parse VT sequences with the vtStream API. This is the Zig version of c-vt-stream, for the same read-only tools.
zig-formatter	Zig	Read VT sequences from stdin and write styled HTML with TerminalFormatter.
cpp-vt-stream	C++	A small C++ port of c-vt-stream. libghostty-vt is a C library, and this is how CI checks that it also compiles from C++.
swift-vt-xcframework	Swift	Use the pre-built XCFramework from a Swift Package. It creates a terminal, writes VT sequences into it, and formats the screen as plain text.
wasm-vt	WebAssembly	Run a terminal in a browser page from JavaScript: write VT sequences into it and format the screen as plain text.
wasm-key-encode	WebAssembly	Encode key events into escape sequences from JavaScript in a browser page.
wasm-sgr	WebAssembly	Parse SGR sequences into text attributes from JavaScript in a browser page.