TactiTerm

Tactile Terminal: A WebUI / TUI built to help teach and study programming concepts in an interactive, hands-on way.

🌟 Overview

TactiTerm is an interactive software engineering tutor designed with a "guidance over answers" philosophy. Rather than providing copy-paste solutions, TactiTerm uses a Socratic AI Mentor to ask probing questions, provide hints, and guide users toward mastering concepts across 10 programming languages.

TactiTerm features both a rich Terminal User Interface (TUI) for command-line productivity and a modern Web UI featuring the Monaco Editor.

✨ Features

🧠 Socratic AI Mentor: Provides step-by-step guidance, code review, and conceptual hints without spoiling direct answers.
💻 Dual Interfaces:
- TUI: Built with Python and Textual for high-productivity, keyboard-driven terminal workflows.
- Web UI: Built with React, Vite, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, and Monaco Editor.
🌐 10 Supported Languages: Python, C#, C++, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, Rust, Lua, HTML, and Go.
⚡ Real-time Linting & Execution: Tree-sitter powered syntax validation and safe local code execution.
📚 Interactive Syntax Handbook: W3Schools-style reference catalog with on-demand AI code examples for functions and core language topics.
🪄 AI Challenge Generator (GenTUI): Create and save custom Markdown programming challenges tailored to specific subjects and difficulties.
⚙️ Configurable & Network Ready: Easily configure LLM endpoints, ports, and enable "public": true to host the Web UI across your local network (0.0.0.0).

🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites

Python 3.10+
uv (Python package runner)
Node.js & npm (for Web UI)
Devbox (optional, for reproducible envs)

Installation

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/your-username/TactiTerm.git
cd TactiTerm

Install dependencies:
```
make install
```

🎮 Usage

Terminal Interface (TUI)

Launch the interactive terminal application:

make tui

Additional TUI modes:

make gentui - Launch the standalone GenTUI AI Challenge Generator.
make tui-debug - Launch TUI in debug logging mode.

Web Interface (Web UI)

Launch the FastAPI backend server and Vite frontend dev server:

make web

Then open your browser to http://localhost:5173.

⚙️ Configuration

When initialized, TactiTerm automatically generates a config.json file in the root directory if one does not exist.

`config.json` Example

{
  "llm": {
    "base_url": "http://localhost:8080/v1",
    "model": "local-model",
    "api_key": "not-needed",
    "temperature": 0.7,
    "max_tokens": 512,
    "timeout_seconds": 60.0
  },
  "web": {
    "host": "127.0.0.1",
    "port": 8000,
    "public": false
  }
}

Key Settings

LLM Settings: Point base_url to any OpenAI-compatible server (LocalAI, vLLM, Ollama, LM Studio, or OpenAI API).
Web UI Public Access: Set "public": true under "web" (or set environment variable TACTTERM_WEB_PUBLIC=true) to bind the server to 0.0.0.0, allowing other devices on your local network to connect.

Environment Variable Overrides

TACTTERM_LLM_BASE_URL - Override LLM API URL.
TACTTERM_LLM_MODEL - Override LLM model name.
TACTTERM_WEB_HOST - Override web server bind address.
TACTTERM_WEB_PORT - Override web server port (default: 8000).
TACTTERM_WEB_PUBLIC - Set to true to enable network binding (0.0.0.0).

🏗️ Architecture

Backend (src/api/main.py): FastAPI application serving REST endpoints for challenges, code linting, code execution, mentoring guidance, and handbook references.
Core Engine (src/core/):
- config.py: Application config manager with auto-generation and env overrides.
- executor.py: Subprocess execution engine for multi-language code snippets.
- linter.py: Tree-sitter syntax checker.
- mentor.py: Async Socratic mentor prompt & LLM service.
- handbook.py: Reference catalog and example generator.
- generator.py: AI challenge generation service.
TUI Client (src/tui/): Textual terminal application.
Web Client (frontend/): React + TypeScript SPA powered by Vite, Tailwind CSS, and Monaco Editor.

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