Chawan
A text-mode web browser and pager built from scratch in memory-safe Nim, with vi-inspired UI, opt-in JavaScript via QuickJS, and support for protocols most browsers abandoned decades ago.
"Chawan is a text-mode web browser and pager for Unix-like systems. It has been developed from scratch in the memory-safe Nim programming language."
The choice of Nim is the quiet thesis here. Writing a web browser in C or C++ is a memory-safety gamble at industrial scale — the attack surface of an HTML parser alone is staggering. Nim gives you C-like performance with memory safety guarantees, making Chawan one of the few browsers built on a foundation where buffer overflows aren't table stakes.
"Chawan supports HTTP(S), SFTP (via libssh2), FTP, Gopher, Gemini, Finger, Spartan."
This protocol list is a deliberate design statement. It treats the web not as a singular platform but as one protocol among many, all equally valid targets for a browser. Gopher and Gemini in particular represent an alternate-history internet — one where hypertext stayed simple and the browser never became an operating system. Chawan renders that alternate history live.
"JavaScript can be used for DOM manipulation and networking. It is opt-in via a configuration option."
Opt-in JavaScript is a UX decision masquerading as a technical one. Every modern browser runs JS by default and makes you work to disable it. Chawan inverts that: JS is off unless you choose it. This isn't just about performance or battery — it's about agency. The browser treats scripting as a capability you grant, not a default you suffer.
Key Themes
- #tool — A working web browser for the terminal, not a toy or a demo
- #concept — Protocol agnosticism as browser philosophy: the web is one option, not the only option
- #pattern — Memory safety by construction: Nim as a deliberate alternative to C/C++ in systems programming. See also Zeroclaw (Rust agent runtime), Zellij (Rust terminal multiplexer), Grok Build (Rust TUI coding agent) for the broader trend of memory-safe systems tools
- #pattern — Sandboxing per site with syscall filtering — a security boundary more browsers should adopt
Critical Analysis
Chawan is a browser built on taste. It doesn't try to be a terminal Chrome — it picks its battles and wins them cleanly. The vi keybindings, the protocol breadth, the JS-as-opt-in posture, the Nim foundation: every choice coheres.
The trade is real, though. This is not a daily driver for the modern web. QuickJS is fast but not V8 — complex SPAs will struggle or fail. The CSS support covers flow, table, and flex layout but not grid. You'll hit walls. But Chawan isn't arguing you should abandon Firefox; it's arguing that "browser" shouldn't mean one thing. A pager for man pages and Markdown that can also follow an HTTP link is a different category of tool, and Chawan defines that category well.
The sandboxing model deserves more attention than it gets. Loading each site in a separate process with syscall filtering is the right architecture — Chromium does this at enormous complexity, and Chawan gets it in a fraction of the code. The per-site boundary is the correct granularity for web isolation, and Chawan proves you don't need a Google-scale engineering org to achieve it.
The project's handling of subprojects — spinning Chame, Chagashi, and Monoucha out as standalone Nim libraries — is good open-source citizenship. Each is independently useful, and the separation makes the architecture legible.
What's missing: no mention of accessibility (screen reader support in a text-mode browser should be trivial but isn't stated), and no clear indicator of how complete the CSS engine is for real-world sites. The gallery exists but isn't linked from the landing page in a way that builds confidence.
Sources: raw/chawan Last updated: 2026-07-25