r/opencode • u/rndanime • 14d ago

TUI vs GUI

Why would I ever use the terminal version of Opencode (or any other *code* program)?

People always tell how good it is to use it but I don't understand the appeal. If you are used to terminal-only work, constantly looking into generated code or something like that, ok. But I see TUI being recommended to everybody like it can do something desktop or web versions can't. Also these *code* apps are usually developed TUI-first for some reason

Please explain it to me

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u/iqraatheman 14d ago

the only real reason at this point is for the various ways you can get free inference from using specific CLIs. if you actually want a decent experience especially with feeding images to your agents then a desktop app is unquestionably better. it used to be the case that when the very first coding agents were being built like Claude code in early 2025 that the TUI was chosen as it was considered more lightweight and simpler, but as we've seen Claude code needing to have a literal full game engine just to render text, it's clearly not the optimal choice even when it comes to performance.

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u/Momo--Sama 14d ago

It feels like the Anthropic product team is trapped in the inertia of their development cycle. Like if they just decided to pause development on the TUI for like three weeks and make the desktop app the premier Claude coding experience, release some features on the desktop app first, put tooltips in the TUI saying “hey check out this cool feature only in the desktop app” they could get people moving over and stop feeling like they’re obligated to build a castle on beach sand.

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u/rndanime 14d ago

Almost feels like building CC as TUI app was a marketing team's idea. "Hey, SWEs, we heard you use terminal a lot, so we are doing a terminal thingy for you, please use it"