@rcarmo/piclaw-addon-lite-term is the add-on form of Piclaw's bundled default xterm.js terminal pane.

It is intentionally identical to the built-in default terminal renderer, keeping Piclaw's existing terminal backend, authentication, session handoff, theme colors, terminal font stack, and vendored xterm.js assets. Use it as a reference implementation and a good starting point for terminal customizations without changing Piclaw core.

What it includes

Vendored runtime assets:

• @xterm/xterm
• @xterm/addon-attach — vendored for completeness, not activated because Piclaw uses JSON WebSocket control frames
• @xterm/addon-canvas
• @xterm/addon-clipboard
• @xterm/addon-fit
• @xterm/addon-image
• @xterm/addon-ligatures
• @xterm/addon-progress
• @xterm/addon-search
• @xterm/addon-serialize
• @xterm/addon-unicode-graphemes
• @xterm/addon-unicode11
• @xterm/addon-web-links
• @xterm/addon-webgl

Piclaw's existing Nerd Font assets are used through the same CSS terminal font stack. The add-on does not vendor font files.

Behavior

• Registers replacement terminal and terminal-tab panes.
• Uses /terminal/session, /terminal/handoff, and /terminal/ws from the existing backend.
• Sends Piclaw's JSON terminal frames for input and resize.
• Defaults to the canvas renderer for low-spec machines.
• Supports ligatures, Unicode width/grapheme handling, clickable links, clipboard helpers, image protocol rendering, search, serialize support, and progress add-on loading.
• Keeps WebGL vendored and available for experiments.

Renderer selection

The default renderer is canvas. To force WebGL in a browser tab:

localStorage.setItem("piclaw:lite-term:renderer", "webgl")
location.reload()

To return to the default:

localStorage.removeItem("piclaw:lite-term:renderer")
location.reload()

Why not AttachAddon?

Piclaw's terminal WebSocket is not a raw PTY byte stream. It exchanges JSON frames such as:

{ "type": "input", "data": "..." }
{ "type": "resize", "cols": 120, "rows": 30 }
{ "type": "output", "data": "..." }

AttachAddon sends and receives raw terminal bytes, so activating it would bypass Piclaw's resize/control protocol. The add-on vendors it as part of the complete xterm add-on set but uses custom socket glue at runtime.