Text.js: Build full-stack React apps that render inside console.log

Text.js is a framework for building React 19 applications that render as text and graphics inside the browser’s developer console, rather than as conventional web pages. It provides familiar app-router features - routes, layouts, navigation, async components, forms, tables, charts, keyboard input and data handlers - along with a layout system that adapts to the DevTools panel. The same apps can run in a terminal using truecolor ANSI output, or be explored by coding agents through an MCP interface. Server-rendered routes can send frames to a lightweight browser player, while static routes can include their initial frame in the page so the console can display it before JavaScript loads.

The framework’s rendering pipeline is designed to avoid unnecessary console output: React commits are laid out into character cells, only changed rows are repainted, unchanged frames are discarded, and each remaining frame is emitted as a single console.log call. Benchmarks shown for a 100-by-32 dashboard report a 0.011 ms one-row edit, no calls for idle frames, and substantially less blank screen time than clearing and redrawing the console. The platform also includes a deployment adapter, caching and middleware support, testing utilities, linting, a DevTools extension, and VS Code previews. A ten-chapter course introduces building and shipping a console-based dashboard, while an optional OpenCode integration connects local models and sessions to an interactive coding environment.