I Built STRM: A Movie Search TUI for the Terminal
I recently built STRM, an open-source terminal application that lets you search for movies without leaving the command line.
Why I built it
I like terminal applications and wanted to create a movie-search experience that felt clean, fast, and easy to navigate.
Instead of building another basic command that prints plain text, I wanted STRM to feel like a complete application running inside the terminal.
Built from scratch
I built the entire project myself.
I spent hours designing the interface, implementing the functionality, testing the navigation, fixing bugs, and improving how everything looks and behaves inside different terminal sizes.
Building a TUI presented some interesting challenges because terminal applications have limited space and need to work entirely through keyboard controls.
Features
- Search for movies from the terminal
- Clean terminal user interface
- Keyboard-based navigation
- Fast and lightweight experience
- Open-source code
Try it
You can find the source code and installation instructions on GitHub:
https://github.com/vatistasdimitris01/STRM
Feedback, bug reports, feature suggestions, and contributions are welcome.
If you like the project, consider giving it a star on GitHub.
What features would you add to a terminal movie application?
This article was written with AI assistance and reviewed by me. STRM itself was designed and built by me.
Top comments (1)
This is the kind of project that makes me miss the days when I had time to just build something for the pure joy of it. STRM looks clean, and I really appreciate that you went all-in on making it feel like a full application rather than just a script that spits out text.
Building a TUI from scratch is deceptively hard—keyboard navigation alone can be a rabbit hole, and terminal resizing is one of those things nobody thinks about until suddenly everything breaks. So kudos for pushing through that.
One feature that comes to mind: since you are already pulling movie data, adding a fuzzy search or a simple search history would make the experience even smoother for people who use it regularly. I know I tend to search for the same obscure films multiple times, and having them autocomplete or show up in a recent list would save those extra keystrokes.
Another angle—and this might be overkill for a first release—is adding a "trending" or "random" section that pulls from an API like TMDB's discover endpoint. Sometimes I open a tool like this not because I know what I want, but because I want to find something new without opening a browser. That kind of serendipity feels right at home in a terminal environment.
To your question about what I would add—honestly, I would love a way to bookmark or save favorites locally. Nothing fancy, just a small JSON file I can sync across machines. That way STRM becomes not just a search tool, but a little personal movie journal that lives in my dotfiles.
Either way, this is a solid first release. Dropped a star on GitHub and looking forward to seeing where you take it next.