Hi HN. I built Waffle because I kept ending up with 15 terminal windows scattered across three spaces with no idea what was running where.Splitting/merging in iTerm kind of works but it never felt intuitive to me.With that in mind, I built something to suit my workflow:Waffle is a native macOS terminal (Built on Miguel de Icaza's SwiftTerm) that tiles your sessions into an auto-scaling grid automatically. 1 session is fullscreen, 2 is side by side, 4 is 2x2, 9 is 3x3. Open a terminal, it joins the grid. Close one, the grid rebalances. No splitting, no config.I've been using it a lot recently and one thing I've found really useful is that sessions detect which repo they're in and group accordingly. Each project gets a distinct colour. Cmd+[ and Cmd+] flip between groups. If you have three repos open across eight terminals, you can filter to just one project's sessions instantly. Also, no accidentally closing a window with CMD-W as it gives you a confirmation and requires a second CMD-W to close.Honestly, if you live in tmux, this probably isn't for you but it's really helped to speed up my workflow.Other things: It comes with a handful of themes (and has support for iTerm themes), bundled JetBrains mono, has keyboard shortcuts for everything. Free, no account, opt-in analytics only. macOS 14+.There's a demo on the landing page if you want to see it in action.
FL score
out of 100
Verdict
high confidence
Competition
9
competitors found, emerging market, funded players
Trend
No signal yet
A native macOS terminal that auto-tiles sessions and groups them by repo, simplifying workflow for developers tired of manual window management.
The pain
The gap
Build angle
Strengths
Questions about this idea?
FlyBot reads the scoring and gives you a second opinion on “Waffle – Native macOS terminal that auto-tiles sessions into a grid”.
Risks
Next steps
Fly Labs Method
Is the pain real, is there a gap, is it the right time, can one person build it.
Waffle addresses a real and specific pain for macOS developers regarding terminal window management, offering a unique auto-tiling and repo-grouping solution that is simpler than existing complex tools. While core terminal functionality is often free, there's a clear gap for a native, intuitive, paid solution for enhanced productivity.
Value Equation
Dream outcome and how likely it feels, against the time and effort it costs.
A promising idea with clear value for developers, but monetization strategy and long-term differentiation need to be solidified in a largely free market.
One-Person Business
Curiosity pull, identity fit, and a path from free value to paid for a solo creator.
Strong problem clarity and simplicity for a niche of macOS developers, but monetization and leverage for future growth need further strategic planning.
Viral Frameworks
Hook strength, shareability, and how cheaply it can be tested.
A clear value proposition for a specific, reachable developer audience, but needs a defined business model and validation of willingness to pay for commercial success.
Builder Lens
Evidence the problem exists, timing, defensibility, and a model that fits on a napkin.
Waffle addresses a desperate and growing need for macOS developers with a well-defined, simple solution that provides immediate value, positioning it well for future relevance.
Why this verdict
Five lenses, one composite. How scoring works
The angle
This weekend
Who is already there, emerging market
A feature-rich terminal emulator for macOS that offers split panes, hotkey windows, and extensive customization.
Pricing: Free and open-source (GPL-2.0-or-later license).
A terminal multiplexer for Unix-like operating systems that allows users to create, access, and control multiple terminal sessions within a single window, with support for panes and windows.
Pricing: Free and open-source.
A GPU-accelerated terminal emulator focused on performance and simplicity, explicitly not supporting tabs or splits, instead encouraging the use of terminal multiplexers or window managers.
Pricing: Free and open-source.
A fast, feature-rich, GPU-accelerated terminal emulator that offers powerful tiling capabilities, tabs, and extensibility with 'kitten' plugins.
Pricing: Free and open-source.
A modern, AI-powered terminal for developers with features like AI command assistance, collaborative terminals, and a focus on productivity.
Pricing: Free tier available. Paid plans start at $18/month for 'Build' (1,500 AI credits/month), $180/month for 'Max' (more AI capacity), and $45/user/month for 'Business' (per user credits). Enterprise pricing is custom.
A tiling window manager for macOS based on binary space partitioning, allowing control over windows, spaces, and displays with a command-line interface and user-defined shortcuts.
Pricing: Free and open-source.
A tiling window manager for macOS inspired by xmonad, automatically arranging windows into various layouts.
Pricing: Free and open-source.
A window management tool for macOS that allows users to move and resize windows using keyboard shortcuts or snapping areas.
Pricing: Free and open-source, with a 'Pro' version available for additional features.
A window manager for macOS that organizes your workspace by snapping windows into predefined tiles with keyboard shortcuts or drag-and-drop.
Pricing: $7.99 (one-time purchase) on the Mac App Store.
What they charge
Recent news
Business Research Insights, March 16 2026
Mordor Intelligence, January 21 2026
Reddit, January 26 2026
Landbase, February 05 2026
Verified Market Reports, April 09 2026
Market signals
The developer tools market is large and experiencing rapid growth, projected to reach between $15.72 billion by 2031 and $33.9 billion by 2035, with a CAGR of around 14.5% to 16.12%. This growth is significantly driven by digital transformation, the increasing adoption of cloud computing, DevOps integration, and agile development methodologies. A key trend is the unprecedented growth of AI-powered developer tools, with some achieving over 1,000% year-over-year growth, and 84% of developers now using or planning to use AI tools in their workflows. Recent funding rounds indicate continued investment in enterprise-focused platforms and AI-driven solutions.
What frustrates people
Last summer we faced a conundrum at my company, Tiger Data, a Postgres cloud vendor whose main business is in timeseries data. We were trying to grow our business towards emerging AI-centric workloads and wanted to provide a state-of-the-art hybrid search stack in Postgres. We'd already built pgvectorscale in house with the goal of scaling semantic search beyond pgvector's main memory limitations. We just needed a scalable ranked keyword search solution too.The problem: core Postgres doesn't provide this; the leading Postgres BM25 extension, ParadeDB, is guarded behind AGPL; developing our own extension appeared daunting. We'd need a small team of sharp engineers and 6-12 months, I figured. And we'd probably still fall short of the performance of a mature system like Parade/Tantivy.Or would we? I'd be experimenting long enough with AI-boosted development at that point to realize that with the latest tools (Claude Code + Opus) and an experienced hand (I've been working in database systems internals for 25 years now), the old time estimates pretty much go out the window.I told our CTO I thought I could solo the project in one quarter. This raised some eyebrows.It did take a little more time than that (two quarters), and we got some real help from the community (amazing!) after open-sourcing the pre-release. But I'm thrilled/exhausted today to share that pg_textsearch v1.0 is freely available via open source (Postgres license), on Tiger Data cloud, and hopefully soon, a hyperscalar near you:https://github.com/timescale/pg_textsearchIn the blog post accompanying the release, I overview the architecture and present benchmark results using MS-MARCO. To my surprise, we were not only able to meet Parade/Tantivy's query performance, but exceed it substantially, measuring a 4.7x advantage on query throughput at scale:https://www.tigerdata.com/blog/pg-textsearch-bm25-fu
AI
Hi HN!I recently switched from a Fedora/GNOME laptop to a MacBook Air. My old setup served me well as a portable workstation, but I’ve started traveling more while working remotely and needed something with similar performance but better battery life. The main thing I missed was a simple taskbar that shows the windows in the current workspace instead of a Dock that mixes everything together.I built boringBar so I would not have to use the Dock. It shows only the windows in the current Space, lets you switch Spaces by scrolling on the bar, and adds a desktop switcher so you can jump directly to any Space. You can also hide the system Dock, pin apps, preview windows with thumbnails, and launch apps from a searchable menu (I keep Spotlight disabled because for some reason it uses a lot of system resources on my machine).I’ve been dogfooding it for a few months now, and it finally felt polished enough to share.It’s for people who like macOS but want window management to feel a bit more like GNOME, Windows, or a traditional taskbar. It’s also for people like me who wanted an easier transition to macOS, especially now that Windows feels increasingly user-hostile.I’d love feedback on the UX, bugs, and whether this solves the same Dock/Spaces pain for anyone else.P.S. It might also appeal to people who feel nostalgic for the GNOME 2 desktop of yore. I started my Linux journey with it, and boringBar brings back some of that feeling for me.
AI
### Describe the project you are working on Godot C# bindings ### Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project For the past weeks, I've been discussing with several Unity users intending to move to Godot C# regarding dealing with the C# garbage collector. The most common complaint I hear from users is that, in Unity, allocations can trigger unexpected GC spikes into the game. In Godot, we target to make all of the high performance APIs (those that intended to be called every frame) not allocate any memory, so theoretically the GC should not be a problem. Additionally, Godot starting from 4.0, uses the Microsoft CoreCLR version of .net, which also supposedly has a better garbage collector than Unity. But in all, after several discussions with Unity users, neither is enough reassurance for them, and they would really feel safer if Godot exposed a zero allocation API. ### Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation The idea of this proposal is that Godot exposes zero allocation versions of many functions in the C# API, that users can use if they desire. Technically, this could be done from the binding generator itself, without breaking compatibility, and without doing any modification to Godot itself. ### Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudo-code, mock-ups, and/or diagrams **WARNING** I am not familiar with C#, so take this as pseudocode. Imagine you have two functions exposed as to C#: ```C# void MyClass.SetArray( Vector2[] array); Vector2[] MyClass.GetArray(); ``` This works and is pretty and intuitive. However, it has two problems: * GC is allocated on return * Memory is copied to Godot native formats every time there is a call. The idea is to add NoAlloc versions, which can be generated directly by the binder automatically when required: ```C# void MyClass.SetArrayNoAlloc( Godot.Collections.PackedVector2Array array); void MyCl
AI