meatshell

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A lightweight, low-memory SSH / terminal client inspired by FinalShell, but written entirely in Rust + Slint. The goal is to keep FinalShell's core experience (resource-monitor sidebar, session management, tabbed terminals) while cutting memory use from the 400 MB+ of a JVM app down to the tens-of-MB range of a native binary.

Screenshots

Welcome page: session management + local resource monitor sidebar

Tabbed terminal (full-screen btop) + SFTP file browser + remote resource monitoring

Download & install

Every pushed v* tag triggers a Gitea Actions build that produces the Windows GNU package and publishes it on the Releases page.

Windows

Download meatshell-*-windows-x86_64.zip, unzip, and run meatshell.exe. At runtime, meatshell-debug.log is written next to meatshell.exe; check it first for SSH connection crashes or unexpected exits.

Linux

tar -xzf meatshell-*-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
cd meatshell-*-linux-x86_64
./meatshell                                  # run it directly
# Optional: install the app icon + launcher entry (shows the icon in the dock /
# app list — no argument needed, it finds the binary next to the script)
chmod +x install-linux.sh && ./install-linux.sh

Requires glibc ≥ 2.35 (Ubuntu 22.04+ / Debian 12+). On Wayland you may need to log out/in once after installing the icon.

macOS

tar -xzf meatshell-*-macos-*.tar.gz          # aarch64 = Apple Silicon, x86_64 = Intel
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine meatshell     # clear the "unsigned app" Gatekeeper flag
./meatshell

To build from source, see Running below.

Roadmap

v0.1

• FinalShell-style dark theme UI
• Local system monitor sidebar (CPU / memory / swap / network throughput, 1 Hz)
• Tabs (welcome page + multiple terminal sessions)
• Session management: create / edit / delete, persisted to local JSON
  • Config location: %APPDATA%/meatshell/sessions.json (Windows) / ~/.config/meatshell/sessions.json (Linux) / ~/Library/Application Support/meatshell/sessions.json (macOS)
• SSH connection scaffold (russh, pure Rust, password + private key)
• Raw PTY input + VT/ANSI terminal view

v0.2

• Full VT/ANSI terminal emulation (vt100/xterm parser, full-screen TUI, scrollback, find, select-copy)
• Remote host resource monitoring (run a remote collector script, like FinalShell)
• SFTP file browser + drag-and-drop upload/download
• Known-hosts (known_hosts) verification (TOFU into the app known_hosts, reject changed keys)
• Store session passwords in the OS keychain (encrypted config fallback when unavailable)

v0.3+

• Split panes for tabbed terminals
• Session groups / folders
• Theme switching (light / follow system)
• Command history & snippet management

Tech stack

Module	Choice
UI	Slint (compiled pure Rust, no GC)
Async runtime	tokio
SSH protocol	russh (no libssh dependency)
System metrics	sysinfo
Serialization	serde + serde_json
Logging	tracing + tracing-subscriber

Running

cargo run --release

On first launch an empty session store is created at %APPDATA%/meatshell/sessions.json. Click "＋ New Session" in the top-right to add your first server.

Project layout

meatshell/
├── Cargo.toml
├── build.rs                 # Slint compiler entry point
├── ui/
│   ├── app.slint            # top-level window
│   ├── theme.slint          # design tokens
│   ├── widgets.slint        # reusable buttons / inputs / sparkline
│   ├── sidebar.slint        # left-hand system monitor panel
│   ├── tabs.slint           # top tab bar
│   ├── welcome.slint        # welcome page / quick connect
│   ├── session_dialog.slint # new / edit session dialog
│   └── terminal_view.slint  # VT/ANSI terminal view + command bar / SFTP panel
└── src/
    ├── main.rs
    ├── app.rs               # UI ↔ backend bridge
    ├── config.rs            # session JSON persistence
    ├── keychain.rs          # OS keychain password storage + encrypted fallback
    ├── known_hosts.rs       # OpenSSH known_hosts verification
    ├── system.rs            # CPU / memory / network sampling
    ├── ssh.rs               # SSH session worker
    └── sftp.rs              # SFTP browser / transfer worker

Development notes

• Slint widgets use a strict layout DSL; after editing a .slint file, cargo check is the fastest feedback loop.
• The application event loop is single-threaded (required by Slint); all cross-thread UI updates go through slint::invoke_from_event_loop callbacks.
• known_hosts uses trust-on-first-use (TOFU): first connections are written to meatshell's own known_hosts; later server-key changes are rejected.
• Session passwords prefer the OS keychain; when no keychain backend is available, meatshell falls back to local ChaCha20-Poly1305 encrypted config.

License

Dual-licensed under MIT OR Apache-2.0.