An experimental Odin terminal multiplexer inspired by i3.

e3 opens terminal panes, arranges them in an i3-style layout tree, and supports numbered workspaces, split layouts, focus movement, pane movement, resize mode, and configurable keybindings. It runs as a native SDL3 window by default, with an optional terminal/TTY renderer.

The easiest way to get the required tools and libraries is with Nix:

nix develop

The development shell provides Odin, SDL3, SDL3_ttf, Fontconfig, and libvterm.

Install the dependencies with Homebrew:

brew install odin sdl3 sdl3_ttf libvterm

Then source the macOS environment helper before building or running:

source scripts/macos-env.sh
odin run src
# or, for the TTY renderer:
odin run src -- --tty

With just installed, the equivalent recipes are:

just macos-run
just macos-tty
just macos-build

macOS uses CoreText for font.family lookup, so Fontconfig is not required. If Option/Alt keybindings conflict with your keyboard layout, set input.mod: "super" in config.yaml to use Command instead.

From the project root:

odin run src

To use the terminal renderer instead of the default SDL3 window:

odin run src -- --tty

odin build src -out:e3
./e3

Configuration is loaded from the first matching path:

1. ./config.yaml
2. ./e3.yaml
3. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/e3/config.yaml
4. ~/.config/e3/config.yaml

See config.yaml for the current options, including font settings, colors, pane styling, modifier key, and keybindings.

The default modifier is Alt.

In resize mode, use h/l to shrink/grow width, k/j to shrink/grow height, and Enter, Esc, or Alt+r to return to normal mode.

This project is a work in progress. See plan.md and i3.md for implementation notes and i3 behavior research.