quarto-term

Persistent interactive terminal sessions for Quarto

quarto-term is a Quarto extension that runs commands in a real, persistent shell session. State carries across cells, colors render faithfully, and you can drive fullscreen TUI apps, all from your .qmd file.

quarto-term is great for:

export NAME="quarto-term"
echo "Hello, $NAME"
Hello, quarto-term

htop

    0[|                           0.7%] Tasks: 42, 112 thr, 118 kthr; 1 runnin
    1[|                           0.7%] Load average: 0.32 0.41 0.18 
    2[                            0.0%] Uptime: 00:13:46
    3[|                           0.7%]
  Mem[|||||||||||||         949M/15.6G]
  Swp[                        0K/3.00G]

  [Main] [I/O]
    PID USER       PRI  NI  VIRT   RES   SHR S  CPU%▽MEM%   TIME+  Command      
   1370 root        20   0  442M 35804 12936 S   0.7  0.2  0:01.03 /usr/bin/pyth
   5190 runner      20   0  8356  4784  3800 R   0.7  0.0  0:00.04 htop
      1 root        20   0 22848 14404  9848 S   0.0  0.1  0:02.95 /sbin/init
    155 root        19  -1  113M 18144 16844 S   0.0  0.1  0:00.52 /usr/lib/syst
    218 root        RT   0  298M 43708  8760 S   0.0  0.3  0:00.03 /sbin/multipa
    226 root        20   0 25980  8000  5184 S   0.0  0.0  0:00.20 /usr/lib/syst
    227 root        20   0  298M 43708  8760 S   0.0  0.3  0:00.00 /sbin/multipa
    228 root        RT   0  298M 43708  8760 S   0.0  0.3  0:00.00 /sbin/multipa
    229 root        RT   0  298M 43708  8760 S   0.0  0.3  0:00.00 /sbin/multipa
    230 root        RT   0  298M 43708  8760 S   0.0  0.3  0:00.00 /sbin/multipa
    231 root        RT   0  298M 43708  8760 S   0.0  0.3  0:00.03 /sbin/multipa
    233 root        RT   0  298M 43708  8760 S   0.0  0.3  0:00.00 /sbin/multipa
    394 root        20   0  3848  2908  1988 S   0.0  0.0  0:00.24 /usr/lib/linu
F1Help  F2Setup F3SearchF4FilterF5Tree  F6SortByF7Nice -F8Nice +F9Kill  F10Quit

All of the above was produced from a single .qmd file using quarto-term.

Why quarto-term?

Quarto’s built-in bash engine executes each code cell in an isolated subshell. That means:

  • Variables, cd, and other state don’t persist between cells.
  • You can’t show interactive TUI applications (htop, vim, nyancat).
  • Output is plain text with no ANSI color support.
  • There’s no way to send special keys (Ctrl-C, arrow keys).
  • You can’t produce terminal recordings alongside your document.

quarto-term solves all of these by running a single persistent shell session that all cells share. It captures output using a real terminal emulator (including colors, cursor movement, and fullscreen apps), and can optionally produce asciicast or termshow recordings for playback.

Features

  • Persistent sessions. State carries across cells (variables, working directory, shell history).
  • ANSI color rendering. Faithfully renders colored output as HTML/LaTeX.
  • Fullscreen capture. Capture TUI apps like htop, vim, or nyancat.
  • Special keys. Send Ctrl-C, arrow keys, Enter, Escape, and more.
  • Human typing simulation. Configurable speed and error rate for realistic recordings.
  • Terminal recordings. Produce .cast (asciicast v2) or .termshow files alongside your document.
  • Line options. Control timing, key behavior, and prompt expectations per line.
  • Multi-line commands. Automatic PS2 continuation prompt detection.
  • Styling. Built-in colorschemes with light/dark mode support, fonts, and sizing.
  • Multiple output formats. HTML, LaTeX/PDF, and Markdown.

Quick install

quarto add jeroenjanssens/quarto-term

On first render, the correct binary for your platform is automatically downloaded from GitHub Releases and cached locally. Supported platforms: macOS (ARM and Intel), Linux (x86_64 and ARM), and Windows.

See Get Started for a complete walkthrough.