TUI Overview

allman-tui is a re-imagined LinkedIn messenger inbox in your terminal — a thin React/Ink front-end over the allman CLI binary and its on-disk message store.

Architecture

Reads (conversation list, message history, slug resolution) come straight from the JSONL/JSON files on disk. No subprocess overhead per keystroke.
Writes (send, sync, search) shell out to the allman binary so rate limiting, pre-send sync, and git commits go through the canonical path.
Live updates subscribe to allman listen’s NDJSON event stream from a long-running subprocess.

src/
  index.tsx                 entry point
  app.tsx                   root component, mode + state machine
  components/
    Sidebar.tsx             conversation list with inline search
    Thread.tsx              message thread, day-grouped, word-wrapped
    Composer.tsx            reply input
    StatusBar.tsx           account, listen, mode, hint bar
    ReactionPicker.tsx      inline emoji picker with search
    NewConversation.tsx     contact-search modal
    TemplatePicker.tsx      quick-reply template selection
    Help.tsx                key reference overlay
  lib/
    allman.ts                file-store reader + allman binary shell-outs
    bundled-bin.ts          extracts embedded allman binary on first run
    types.ts                message / conversation / event shapes
    format.ts               relativeTime, dayLabel, color hashing
    emoji-data.ts           searchable emoji database
    templates.ts            template loading and variable substitution

Modes

The TUI is modal — what your keys mean depends on which mode you’re in. The current mode is shown in the status bar.

Mode	What you can do
`browse`	Navigate conversations, jump into other modes
`search`	Filter the sidebar by name, slug, or headline
`compose`	Type a reply, `Enter` to send, `Esc` to cancel
`new`	Search contacts, pick one to open or draft
`command`	Type a command palette command
`reactionPick`	Pick an emoji reaction for the selected message
`templatePick`	Choose a quick-reply template
`help`	Full keybinding reference

Binary resolution

At runtime, the TUI looks for the allman binary in this order:

ALLMAN_BIN environment variable
The bundled binary embedded in dist/allman-tui (production builds)
allman on PATH (dev mode)

Store discovery

ALLMAN_STORE env, otherwise always $HOME/.allman. If missing or empty, the TUI prompts you to run allman login.