Living on the Linux Console — Part 2: casty, a Full Browser for TTY

"GUI isn't an option." — Anonymous In Part 1, I built bcon — a GPU-accelerated terminal emulator for the Linux console. But there's one thing you can't escape as a developer: A web browser. AI coding agents can handle research just fine. But what about checking your own web app renders correctly? Or GitHub Actions, PR reviews, and other things gh can't cover? For those, you need a real browser. I looked for existing options. Here's what I found: eww browsh Carbonyl awrit casty ⭐ Engine Emacs shr headless Firefox Chromium fork Electron Chrome headless-shell Rendering Text + limited images ANSI block chars Unicode blocks (▄ + 24bit) Kitty Graphics Kitty Graphics JavaScript ❌ ✅ ✅ (WebGL/WebGPU) ✅ ✅ Site fidelity 🔴 Low 🟡 Low 🟡 Medium 🟢 High 🟢 High No GUI env ✅ Linux ✅ / Mac ❌ ✅ ❌ (display server required) ✅ (no X11, SSH-friendly) Text copy ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅ (Alt+C) Mouse ❌ 🔺 ✅ ✅ ✅ Install M-x package-install go install npm i -g carbonyl curl | bash npm i -g @sanohiro/casty Nothing checked al