Ralph TUI is an open-source terminal user interface and task orchestrator for AI coding agents, developed by subsy and hosted on GitHub with mirrors on SourceForge. It shifts the AI workflow away from standard conversational chat windows into a structured, queue-driven execution engine designed to operate like a build tool. In practice, Ralph TUI manages a backlog of engineering tasks directly in the terminal. The orchestrator executes a disciplined loop: selecting the highest-priority task, assembling the necessary prompt and context, triggering the agent process, monitoring the run for completion criteria, and progressing through the pipeline. It also supports reusable behavioral definitions ("skills") to standardize how agents approach planning, implementation, and code review stages. Ralph TUI differs from standard conversational coding assistants by focusing on harness-level orchestration, state tracking, and repeatable multi-step workflows. Instead of requiring constant manual prompt-and-response cycles, it handles task dependencies and lifecycle state transitions within a consolidated terminal view. The project is open source under the MIT License and developed in TypeScript, supporting Linux and Unix-like terminal environments.
Tags: agent harness, ai agent, cli, coding agent, terminal