tili

A lightweight, keyboard-driven terminal tiling manager inspired by i3. Run independent shells and interactive applications in tiled panes, locally or over SSH—no daemon, graphical environment, or client-side companion required.

Unlike i3, which tiles graphical windows inside an X11/Wayland session, tili tiles PTY-backed terminal panes inside a single terminal window. It is for managing many shells and TUIs in one terminal, especially over SSH, without a multiplexer or desktop environment. For example, if you have to work on Windows and can only reach a Linux server through one predetermined SSH client, run tili there and still get the i3-style workflow.

Features

• i3-style splits, directional navigation, resizing, and fullscreen panes.
• Ten workspaces with a compact workspace bar.
• A scriptable launcher with case-insensitive fuzzy search and highlighted matches.
• Native Rust SSH host discovery from ~/.ssh/config.
• Mouse selection, copy-on-release, and per-pane scrollback.

Install

Requires Linux. The native SSH launcher uses the system OpenSSH client; Python is not required.

Download a prebuilt binary from the GitHub releases page, or compile it yourself. Compiling requires a stable Rust toolchain; from a checkout of this repository:

cargo install --path .
tili

Or start it on a remote machine where tili is installed:

ssh -t user@server tili

Key bindings

Keys	Action
Alt+Enter	New shell pane
Alt+T	New shell in the focused pane's working directory, when detectable
Alt+Backspace	Close pane
Alt+H / Alt+V	Next split: side by side / above and below
Alt+E	Toggle split orientation
Alt+J / K / L / Semicolon	Focus left / down / up / right
Alt+Shift + direction	Move pane
Alt+R	Resize mode; use the same directions, then Enter or Escape
Alt+F	Toggle fullscreen
Alt+1…9 / Alt+0	Switch to workspace 1…9 / 10
Alt+Shift+1…9 / Alt+Shift+0	Move pane to workspace
Alt+D	Open launcher
Alt+Shift+C	Reload configuration

Arrow keys also work for directional navigation. Closing the last pane in a workspace returns to the previous open workspace; closing the final pane exits.

SSH launcher

Press Alt+D, type to filter, and press Enter to connect in a new pane. Hosts appear as test1 (test1.localhost.myydomain) when a HostName is configured. Use Up/Down to select, Ctrl+R to refresh, and Escape to close.

Additional launcher modes can use your own executable scripts. Configure only trusted scripts: they run with your user's permissions.

For a minimal Python example, copy scripts/example-menu.py to your scripts directory, make it executable, and add a mode:

install -Dm755 scripts/example-menu.py ~/.config/tili/scripts/example-menu.py

# ~/.config/tili/config.toml
[[launcher.modes]]
name = "ssh"
builtin = "ssh"

[[launcher.modes]]
name = "examples"
command = "~/.config/tili/scripts/example-menu.py"

Each mode must specify exactly one of builtin or command. Keep the ssh builtin entry when adding other modes so the SSH launcher remains available. External modes use script list for JSON Lines entries and script select <id> for one JSON action response.

Configuration

No configuration is required. Optional settings live at ~/.config/tili/config.toml, or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tili/config.toml.

See AGENTS.md for configuration examples, the script protocol, development notes, and testing guidance.

Keyboard modifiers and clipboard access depend on the host terminal's capabilities and settings, including when used over SSH. Session persistence, tabbed layouts, and stacking are not currently supported.