# TUI Studio

22 Hacker News commenters recommended TUI Studio and 28 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** A visual design tool for terminal user interfaces, praised as an original idea that feels polished in places. Code export was not working yet, the most common caveat.

## Why people recommend it

- Original idea for terminal UIs (3 comments): "One of the most original ideas I have seen on HackerNews in the past few years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363303)) "This is an excellent idea, I'm getting some old Borland vibes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47365396)) "Noice figma for terminals! Dude super cool idea, great job =D" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362919))
- Useful for designing terminal layouts (2 comments): "You can still design the layout. That’s useful, but not nearly as useful as they are planning." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47365025)) "There is a very valid use case for that." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47364856))
- Polished, stable-feeling app (2 comments): "Surprised how good it is but also surprised how much time it takes to get things polished." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47371031)) "it feels stable and complete as well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362614))
- Attractive website and ASCII animation (2 comments): "The website UI is unreal, I loved the idea" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363353)) "The background ASCII animation is so cool!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47364035))

## What people warn about

- Code export not working yet (6 comments): "the code export isn't even working yet, which makes the whole thing feel premature" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47365084)) "the actual product, the code export, isn't working" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47365731)) "Code export is not functional yet" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47397781))
- Unclear explanation of purpose (2 comments): "this is a cool idea lol but is a pretty nonsensical explanation of what you can even do with it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47366157)) "This is nonsensical, there is nothing textual about the UIs being shown here." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363752))
- Fails to open for some users (3 comments): "Gatekeeper blocks the app immediately." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363668)) "It might all be hallucinations anyways, and others report not even being able to open the app." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47366591)) "TUIStudio cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47366638))
- Unclear value versus AI or web tools (2 comments): "I'm not sure this visual design approach would save time vs simply prompting an AI agent." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367637)) "why not just use CSS, HTML, React, etc. at this point?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47363997))

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "TUI Studio", https://hackerapproved.com/p/tui-studio/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).