Hextrix

v1.1.0 — Stationary data, living color.

Quick jump: Install · Build from source · Options · Sweep · Keys · Accent colors · Visualizers · Audio · Environment · License

Hextrix fills your terminal with a dense grid of two-character hexadecimal tokens, like a frozen memory dump. The characters never move — only their colors do. Slow, organic regions of color flow through the grid like liquid, merging, stretching and dissipating, while individual token pairs flicker to new random values.

Features

• Fixed grid — tokens are laid out once from the terminal size and stay in place; resizing reflows only what is needed, nothing ever scrolls.
• Two foreground states — body text is drawn in deep gray (terminal color 8) further dimmed with A_DIM, so it recedes hard; the liquid regions use a bold accent color (default red) that pops against it. No gradients, RGB palettes or glow; the background is always your terminal's default background.
• Ambient liquid — a domain-warped noise field advected by a curl (divergence-free) flow produces amoeba-like shapes with tendrils that stretch, curve, merge and split.
• Token flicker — any token pair can randomly change to a new value; the rate is user controlled (and can be frozen).
• Audio reactive — system output is captured through PipeWire and reduced to bass / mid / treble energies that push waves, swirls and ripples into the same color field. It is not an equalizer: the characters never move.
• Cheap — ~14 % of one CPU core at 60 FPS on a 200×50 terminal, with monotonic frame pacing, per-cell dirty tracking and no per-frame allocations.

Install

One-liner — clones, builds and installs into ~/.local/bin (already on PATH on Omarchy):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenRootdev/hextrix/main/install.sh | sh

Uninstall:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenRootdev/hextrix/main/uninstall.sh | sh

Both honor a custom PREFIX (default ~/.local). They need git, make, a C11 compiler and ncursesw — on Arch:

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel ncurses git

No root privileges are required. PipeWire headers are optional and detected automatically; install pipewire if you want audio reactivity.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/OpenRootdev/hextrix.git
cd hextrix
make            # build only          -> ./hextrix
./install.sh    # build + install     -> ~/.local/bin/hextrix

Options

-a, --alnum      alphanumeric tokens instead of hexadecimal
-n, --no-audio   do not capture system audio
-f, --fps N      target frame rate, 10..120 (default 60)
-h, --help       show usage
-V, --version    show version

Sweep mode

hextrix sweep <duration> is a one-shot intro effect: it lights a random, incomplete subset of the tokens instantly (most of the grid stays empty), then a wavy front rolls down from above and washes the grid — already moving on the very first frame, accelerating as it falls over <duration> seconds (0.1–60) and exits as soon as the wiper reaches the last row. q / Esc / Ctrl+C aborts early (still a clean exit). Combine with -a for alphanumeric tokens:

hextrix sweep 0.5

Keys

Key	Action
q / Ctrl+C	quit cleanly (restores the terminal)
space	pause / resume everything
r	reset the fluid field without touching the grid
m	enable / disable audio reactivity
+ / -	animation intensity (more / less red)
↑ / ↓	token change speed (↓ freezes the hexdump, ↑ resumes)
← / →	fluid speed: slow it down (to 0.15×) / speed it up (to 4×)
v	cycle visualizer: wave → rain → off (liquid, default); the name flashes
1–9	accent color of the liquid (see below)
h / ?	toggle a temporary help overlay (auto-hides after ~9 s)
Esc	close the help overlay

Switching hints (visualizer, accent, speed) flash briefly in the middle of the screen on a dim plate so they stay readable over the tokens. The display is immersive by default: no borders, offsets, status bars or overlays.

Accent colors

The liquid regions are drawn in one accent color at a time. Press 1–9 to switch; the name flashes on screen and the whole field repaints immediately:

Key	Color	Key	Color
1	red (default)	6	cyan
2	green	7	white
3	yellow	8	bright red
4	blue	9	bright magenta
5	magenta

Visualizer styles

By default the visualizer is off: you get the ambient liquid — an organic field of color blobs drifting through the whole grid, energized by the music. Press v to opt into a visualizer style; pressing it past the last style turns it back off:

Mode	Look
liquid (default)	organic noise-gated blobs drifting with the curl flow
wave	a smooth cava-style swell rolling along the bottom edge
rain	vertical streaks born at the top, falling down

In wave, the crest line lifts with the music (bass/mids) and settles when it goes quiet; trebles add foam-like sparkle at the surface. In rain, bass and mids speed the fall. All modes breathe on their own without audio.

Audio

Hextrix opens a PipeWire capture stream against the highest-priority Audio/Sink node using stream.capture.sink=true, i.e. it listens to the sink monitor (everything the machine is playing). The signal is filtered with three IIR bands (bass ≈ 130 Hz low-pass, mid ≈ 900 Hz band-pass, treble ≈ 4.2 kHz high-pass), RMS-normalized and smoothed before it touches the fluid:

• bass drives broad, powerful waves,
• mid drives swirling and deformation of the flow,
• treble creates fine ripples,
• silence gradually returns the field to its idle behavior.

Audio limitations (honest notes)

• Audio support is compiled in only when libpipewire-0.3 is present at build time; otherwise the binary builds fine and audio_backend reports none.
• If no sink exists, PipeWire is not running, or the stream cannot connect, Hextrix keeps running with the ambient animation (m toggles the attempt).
• The stream requests F32 mono at 48 kHz; PipeWire normally converts. On exotic rates the link may fail — the animation still works.
• It captures system output only, not individual application streams, and it does no MPRIS/metadata work.
• Band analysis uses IIR filters, not an FFT, to stay dependency-free.

Environment

• HEXTRIX_LOG=/path/to/file writes a diagnostic log (startup info, grid size, FPS, red coverage, audio state and band energies every two seconds).

Notes on the visual model

1. A time-evolving value-noise field is domain-warped to produce the ambient liquid pattern; its gradient is thresholded into the two color states with hysteresis, so boundaries move smoothly instead of flickering.
2. A second noise field provides the velocity potential; its curl advects a dye field (semi-Lagrangian sampling) so disturbances travel coherently through neighbouring cells.
3. Audio injects noise-gated dye into the same field — the animation and the audio response are one simulation, not two layers.

Pointer/mouse tracking is not enabled in this build.

Project layout

hextrix/
├── Makefile
├── README.md
├── LICENSE
├── install.sh      build + install to ~/.local/bin (also curl-pipeable)
├── uninstall.sh    remove it again
├── assets/
│   └── demo.gif       screen recording of the app in a real terminal
├── src/
│   ├── main.c        startup, frame loop, terminal lifecycle
│   ├── grid.c/.h     token generation, resize, mutation
│   ├── fluid.c/.h    noise fields, advection, thresholding, audio input
│   ├── renderer.c/.h dirty per-cell rendering, overlays, flash labels
│   ├── input.c/.h    key handling and UI state
│   ├── sweep.c/.h    one-shot sweep mode (hextrix sweep <duration>)
│   └── audio.c/.h    PipeWire capture + band analysis (or stubs)
└── tests/
    └── harness.py    pty-based acceptance tests (python3 tests/harness.py)

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Support

If Hextrix makes your terminal feel alive, you can fuel the next one: