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Kaku is a deeply customized fork of WezTerm, designed for an out-of-the-box experience.
- Zero Config: Polished defaults with JetBrains Mono, opencode theme, optimized macOS font rendering, smooth animations.
- Built-in Shell Suite: Comes pre-loaded with Starship, z, Delta, syntax highlighting, autosuggestions, and autocompletions.
- Fast & Lightweight: 40% smaller binary, instant startup, lazy loading, stripped-down GPU-accelerated core.
- Lua Scripting: Retains the full power of WezTerm's Lua engine for infinite customization.
- Download Kaku DMG & Drag to Applications
- Or install with Homebrew:
brew install tw93/tap/kaku - Open Kaku. The app is notarized by Apple, so it opens without security warnings
- On first launch, Kaku will automatically set up your shell environment
Kaku comes with intuitive macOS-native shortcuts:
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| New Tab | Cmd + T |
| New Window | Cmd + N |
| Split Pane Vertical | Cmd + D |
| Split Pane Horizontal | Cmd + Shift + D |
| Zoom/Unzoom Pane | Cmd + Shift + Enter |
| Resize Pane | Cmd + Ctrl + Arrows |
| Close Tab/Pane | Cmd + W |
| Navigate Tabs | Cmd + [, Cmd + ] or Cmd + 1-9 |
| Navigate Panes | Cmd + Opt + Arrows |
| Clear Screen | Cmd + R |
| Font Size | Cmd + +, Cmd + -, Cmd + 0 |
| Smart Jump | z <dir> |
| Smart Select | z -l <dir> |
| Recent Dirs | z -t |
Kaku comes with a carefully curated suite of CLI tools, pre-configured for immediate productivity:
- Starship: A fast, customizable prompt showing git status, package versions, and execution time.
- z: A smarter cd command that learns your most used directories for instant navigation.
- Delta: A syntax-highlighting pager for git, diff, and grep output.
- zsh-completions: Extended command and subcommand completion definitions.
- Syntax Highlighting: Real-time command validation and coloring.
- Autosuggestions: Intelligent, history-based completions similar to Fish shell.
Kaku is fully configurable via standard Lua scripts and is 100% compatible with WezTerm configuration.
On macOS, bundled defaults in Kaku.app/Contents/Resources/kaku.lua are fallback only, so user config is loaded first.
Use a single user config path: ~/.config/kaku/kaku.lua.
- Check/apply update from CLI:
kaku update - Remove Kaku-managed shell defaults and integration:
kaku reset(or non-interactivekaku reset --yes) - GUI auto-update check uses numeric version comparison (for example
0.1.10is correctly newer than0.1.9).
I heavily rely on the CLI for both work and personal projects. Tools I've built, like Mole and Pake, reflect this.
I used Alacritty for years, but its lack of multi-tab support became cumbersome for AI-assisted coding. Kitty has some aesthetic and positioning quirks I couldn't get past. Ghostty shows promise but font rendering needs work. Warp feels bloated and requires a login. iTerm2 is reliable but showing its age and harder to deeply customize.
WezTerm is robust and hackable, and I am grateful for its powerful engine. However, I wanted an environment that was ready immediately, without extensive configuration—and something significantly faster and lighter.
So I built Kaku to be that environment: fast, polished, and ready to work.
| Metric | Upstream | Kaku | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|
| Executable Size | ~67 MB | ~40 MB | Aggressive symbol stripping & feature pruning |
| Resources Volume | ~100 MB | ~80 MB | Asset optimization & lazy-loaded assets |
| Launch Latency | Standard | Instant | Just-in-time initialization |
| Shell Bootstrap | ~200ms | ~100ms | Optimized environment provisioning |
Achieved through aggressive stripping of unused features, lazy loading of color schemes, and shell optimizations.
- If Kaku helped you, star the repo or share it with friends.
- Got ideas or found bugs? Open an issue/PR or check CONTRIBUTING.md for details.
- Like Kaku? Buy Tw93 a Coke to support the project!
MIT License, feel free to enjoy and participate in open source.