--- title: "Perch: Social Media from the Terminal" url: "https://ricardodantas.me/posts/perch-a-terminal-social-client/" markdown_url: "https://ricardodantas.me/posts/perch-a-terminal-social-client/index.md" author: "Ricardo Dantas" date: 2026-02-27 lastmod: 2026-02-27 categories: ["Dev"] tags: ["rust","tui","mastodon","bluesky","social-media","terminal","cli"] summary: "After building RSS readers and file organizers in Rust, I turned my attention to social media. Perch is a terminal client for Mastodon and Bluesky that lets you read, post, and engage without ever opening a browser." --- # Perch: Social Media from the Terminal I've been on a bit of a streak with Rust and terminal apps. After [Feedo and Hazelnut](https://ricardodantas.me/posts/building-tui-apps-with-rust/), I kept looking for things I do daily that could live in the terminal. Social media was an obvious one, and an interesting challenge. The thing about social media clients is that they're either overwhelming web apps with infinite scroll and algorithmic noise, or they're bare-bones API wrappers that feel like work. I wanted something in between: a beautiful, keyboard-driven interface that makes social media feel intentional instead of addictive. ## Why a Terminal Client? I spend most of my day in the terminal. Between coding, managing files with Hazelnut, reading feeds with Feedo, and everything else, the terminal is home. Opening a browser tab for Mastodon or Bluesky always felt like a context switch, and context switches are expensive. Reading social media in a terminal also strips away most of the manipulation. No infinite scroll, no notification badge, no algorithmic feed. You see the posts, you reply to what you want to reply to, and you close it. ## What Perch Does Perch supports both Mastodon and Bluesky, which covers the decentralized social networks I actually use. You authenticate once, and then everything works through either the TUI (text user interface) or the CLI. The TUI is a three-panel layout: accounts on the left, timeline in the center, and post detail on the right. It's navigated entirely with vim keybindings, which at this point feels as natural as breathing. You can browse your home timeline, like and boost posts, reply, compose new posts, everything you'd do in a web client. But the part I'm most proud of is **cross-posting**. Write a post once, and Perch sends it to both Mastodon and Bluesky simultaneously. I've been maintaining a presence on both networks, and doing it manually was getting old. Now it's one command or one keystroke. The CLI side is equally useful. You can script your social media: schedule posts, fetch timelines, manage accounts, all from shell scripts or cron jobs. It composes nicely with other tools. ## The Technical Bits Building a multi-network social client in Rust was more complex than my previous projects. Mastodon uses OAuth and a REST API, while Bluesky uses the AT Protocol with app passwords. Abstracting these behind a unified `SocialApi` trait took some careful design, but the result is clean. Adding a new network in the future would be straightforward. Credentials are stored in the system keyring (via the `keyring` crate), so no plaintext tokens lying around in config files. There's also a SQLite-backed cache for offline reading, which means Perch works even when your connection doesn't. For theming, I integrated [ratatui-themes](https://github.com/ricardodantas/ratatui-themes), a theme library I built separately. Perch ships with 15 themes out of the box, from Dracula to Catppuccin to a neon Cyberpunk theme that's entirely too fun. ## What I Learned This Time Each Rust project teaches me something different. The trait-based abstraction paid off more than I expected. Because `SocialApi` already let me treat Mastodon and Bluesky uniformly, adding cross-posting later was almost trivial. OAuth, on the other hand, was painful. That's not Rust's fault. OAuth flows involve HTTP redirects, a local server, and token exchange, and the whole thing is messy wherever you implement it. Getting it right took longer than I'd like to admit. SQLite remains the right default for anything desktop or CLI. Zero configuration, embedded, fast, and the `rusqlite` crate makes it feel native. The surprise was themes. I added theming to Feedo almost as an afterthought and it became the most commented-on feature, so for Perch I treated it as a first-class concern from day one. ## Try It Perch is open source and available now: - **Website:** [perch.ricardodantas.me](https://perch.ricardodantas.me) - **GitHub:** [github.com/ricardodantas/perch](https://github.com/ricardodantas/perch) - **Install:** `brew install ricardodantas/tap/perch` or `cargo install perch` If you use Mastodon, Bluesky, or both, give it a try. At minimum it saves you a browser tab. 🐦