vterm/Architecture.md

Files

The package

File	Role
main.py	Entry point. Imports every command and listener class so Sublime discovers them, and defines plugin_loaded().
vterm/terminal.py	Terminal: pty process, emulator ownership, the reader/renderer threads, and everything written back to the app.
vterm/emulator.py	VtScreen and VtStream: pyte subclasses adding the terminal features these agents need.
vterm/render.py	Screen → view text, colour overlays, caret, folding, trimming.
vterm/scheme.py	SchemeManager: generates one theme's colour scheme, the scopes the renderer paints with. get_scheme_manager caches one instance per theme name, each terminal frozen to the instance it was opened or rethemed with.
vterm/themes.py	The built-in palettes (default, homebrew, pro, slate, red-alert).
vterm/commands.py	The Sublime commands: open, keypress, copy/paste, theme picker, clear, cleanup, close.
vterm/listeners.py	VtermCoreEventListener: focus, IME capture, copy/paste rerouting, the mousemap context.
vterm/mouse.py	Wheel and click handling.
vterm/keys.py	Key name + modifiers → escape sequence tables.
vterm/utils.py	settings(), the responsive throttle, the intermission pacer, rev_wcwidth.

Sublime-facing files at the repo root

File	Role
vterm.sublime-settings	Defaults for the eleven plugin settings.
vterm.sublime-commands	Four palette entries: open, open terminal in project folder, clear screen, select theme.
vterm.sublime-syntax	An intentionally empty hidden syntax, so terminal text is never tokenized.
Default.sublime-keymap	245 generated bindings. Do not edit by hand — regenerate with tools/gen_keymap.py.
Default (OSX).sublime-mousemap	Two wheel bindings and the middle button.
dependencies.json	Package Control libraries.

Generated at runtime, not in the repo: Packages/User/vterm/vterm.hidden-color-scheme.

Classes

• Terminal (terminal.py) — one per terminal tab. Owns the pty, the VtScreen and VtStream, and the two threads. Instances live in the class-level registry Terminal._terminals, keyed by view id; Terminal.from_id(view.id()) is how every command and listener finds its terminal, and it is a plain dict lookup, so it is the cheapest possible gate to put at the top of a hook.
• TerminalPtyProcess (terminal.py) — ptyprocess.PtyProcess that accepts str.
• VtScreen (emulator.py) — pyte.Screen plus the alternate screen, scrollback, synchronized output, mouse/focus/paste modes, cursor styles, query replies, OSC handling. Mutated only by the renderer thread, so it carries no lock.
• VtStream (emulator.py) — pyte.Stream with a rewritten parser FSM. Stock pyte drops what these agents rely on: >/</= prefixed CSI, the DECRQM $p intermediate, and OSC codes longer than one digit. Its feed() regex-matches complete plain CSI and dispatches them directly (params memoized) — pyte resumes the parser coroutine once per character, which dominated escape-heavy floods. OSC, charsets, private/prefixed CSI and : subparams still take the coroutine, byte for byte; a read ending mid-CSI is carried into the next one. Parity is enforced by a differential test (run_fast_path_cases).
• Cursor (emulator.py) — replaces pyte's so the default attribute set can be a Char carrying the extra linefeed field.
• SchemeManager (scheme.py) — module singleton scheme_manager. Owns the generated scheme file and the mapping from colour combination to scope name.
• VtermRenderCommand (render.py) — Sublime keeps one command instance per view, so its colored_lines, _row_cache, _key_counter, the scrollback chunk bookkeeping (_archived_chunks, _open_rows, _open_chunk, _trimmed) and _lastrow are that view's render state.

Commands

Command	Class	Reached from
vterm_open	VtermOpenCommand	palette, user keybindings
vterm_open_terminal_project_folder	VtermOpenTerminalProjectFolderCommand	palette
vterm_initialize_view	VtermInitializeViewCommand	internal
vterm_keypress	VtermKeypressCommand	244 keymap bindings
vterm_render	VtermRenderCommand	renderer thread
vterm_show_cursor	VtermShowCursorCommand	internal
vterm_copy / vterm_paste / vterm_paste_text	commands.py	on_text_command, IME capture
vterm_paste_selection	commands.py	mousemap, middle button
vterm_select_theme	VtermSelectThemeCommand	palette
vterm_clear_screen	VtermClearScreenCommand	palette, super+shift+k
vterm_cleanup	VtermCleanupCommand	renderer, on process exit
vterm_close	VtermCloseCommand	nothing — available for a user keybinding
vterm_clear_undo_stack / vterm_noop	commands.py	internal
vterm_scroll / vterm_mouse_click	mouse.py	mousemap, drag_select interception

Two application-wide EventListeners: VtermCoreEventListener (listeners.py) and VtermMouseEventListener (mouse.py).

---

Terminal concepts, briefly

For anyone who has not worked with terminal protocols before. The ones vterm implements are marked ✅.

Control bytes — single characters below 0x20 with an effect rather than a glyph: CR (\r) return to column 0, LF (\n) next line, BS backspace, HT tab, BEL bell.

Escape sequence — ESC (0x1B) followed by more bytes. Everything below is one.

• CSI ✅ — Control Sequence Introducer, ESC [. The workhorse: ESC[2J clear screen, ESC[10;5H move the cursor. Ends with a final byte that names the operation; numbers in between are its parameters.
• SGR ✅ — Select Graphic Rendition, CSI … m. Sets colour and style: ESC[1m bold, ESC[31m red foreground, ESC[38;5;208m a 256-palette colour, ESC[38;2;r;g;bm truecolor, ESC[0m reset. This is what TUIs emit most.
• OSC ✅ — Operating System Command, ESC ], ending at BEL or ST. Carries strings rather than numbers: OSC 0/2 set the window title, OSC 10/11 query the default foreground/background, OSC 52 reads or writes the system clipboard.
• DCS / APC — Device Control String (ESC P) and Application Program Command (ESC _). Long payloads: sixel images, kitty graphics. vterm parses their framing and discards the payload, so an image never leaks into the text.
• SS3 ✅ — ESC O, a single shifted character. Cursor keys take this form in application mode; F1-F4 use it too.
• ST — String Terminator, ESC \, which ends OSC/DCS/APC payloads (BEL also ends OSC).

Modes are switches. DEC private modes are set with CSI ? n h (DECSET) and cleared with CSI ? n l (DECRST); DECRQM ✅ (CSI ? n $p) asks whether one is on, which is how an app discovers what the terminal supports.

• 1049 ✅ alternate screen — a second, scrollback-less buffer for full-screen apps, so leaving vim restores your shell exactly as it was.
• 2026 ✅ synchronized output — "I am mid-frame, do not draw yet"; what makes a fullscreen UI update without tearing.
• 2004 ✅ bracketed paste — pasted text is wrapped in ESC[200~/ESC[201~ so an app can tell it apart from typing and not auto-indent it.
• 1000 / 1002 / 1003 ✅ mouse reporting — clicks / clicks with drag / all motion.
• 1006 ✅ SGR mouse encoding — the modern wire form, ESC[<button;col;rowM, without the 223-column limit of the original.
• 1004 ✅ focus reporting — ESC[I on focus, ESC[O on blur.
• DECCKM ✅ — application cursor keys: arrows switch from CSI A to SS3 A.
• DECAWM ✅ — autowrap at the right margin.
• DECSCNM ✅ — reverse video for the whole screen.
• DECSCUSR ✅ (CSI n SP q) — caret shape: block, underline or bar, blinking or not.
• DECSTBM ✅ (CSI t;b r) — set the scrolling region to a band of rows.
• DECKPAM — application keypad mode, the numeric keypad's equivalent of DECCKM. vterm ignores it.
• LNM ✅ — line feed/new line mode; decides whether Enter sends CR or CR LF.

Queries — the app asks, the terminal answers on the input stream, as if typed:

• DA1 / DA2 ✅ (CSI c, CSI > c) — Device Attributes: what kind of terminal are you, and what version. Claude Code waits on DA1 with no timeout, so failing to answer hangs it.
• DSR / CPR ✅ (CSI n, CSI 6n) — Device Status Report / Cursor Position Report: "are you ok" and "where is the cursor". Private DSR 996 reports whether the palette is light or dark.
• XTVERSION ✅ (CSI > q) — the terminal's name and version. Naming ourselves is what lets apps enable 2026 on a generic TERM.
• Kitty keyboard protocol — a richer key encoding with release events. vterm answers the probe (CSI ? u) with zero flags, so apps fall back to something else — for pi that is modifyOtherKeys, which it then enables unprompted.
• modifyOtherKeys ✅ (CSI > 4 ; n m) — xterm's pre-kitty answer to the same problem: keys whose modified form has no legacy encoding are sent as CSI 27 ; <mod> ; <code> ~. While an app has it on, vterm uses that form for modified enter, tab, backspace and space — Shift+Enter is CSI 27;2;13~, since a bare ESC CR is indistinguishable from Alt+Enter. Ctrl+letters keep their control bytes, so Ctrl+C stays \x03.

Other terms

• pty — pseudo-terminal: a kernel device pair. The child thinks its stdin/stdout is a terminal; we hold the master end and read what it writes.
• TIOCSWINSZ / SIGWINCH ✅ — telling the pty its new size delivers SIGWINCH to the child, which is how a resize reaches the app.
• wcwidth ✅ — how many columns a character occupies: 1 for ASCII, 2 for CJK and most emoji, 0 for combining marks. Terminals are grids, so this has to agree with the font or the caret drifts.
• IME — Input Method Editor: the OS layer that turns keystrokes into composed text (pinyin → 中文, dead keys → accents). It commits text without a matching key event, which is why on_modified exists.
• TERM / COLORTERM ✅ — environment variables describing the terminal's capabilities. Children get TERM=xterm-256color and COLORTERM=truecolor.