DEV Community: 1234567890-

A modular terminal toolbox with a plugin system (tinfo v1.0)

1234567890- — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:18:21 +0000

Terminal Info CLI v1.0

I’ve been working on Terminal Info (tinfo), a CLI written in Rust.

It started as a simple system info tool, but grew into a modular terminal toolbox with a plugin-based design.

What you get out of the box

Run tinfo and you get a clean dashboard (location/weather/time/network/CPU/memory). There are commands for:

weather + time
ping/latency/network
system + disk/storage
diagnostics groups
server mode for VPS environments
--json, --plain, --compact output modes
shell completions (bash, zsh, fish)
profiles + theming via ~/.tinfo/config.toml

The “one CLI, many tools” plugin model

Terminal Info routes subcommands to executables:

Instead of building a one use CLI, the goal is to keep the core small and let functionality grow through plugins.

tinfo <plugin-name>    # resolves to tinfo-<plugin-name>

Managed plugins live under:

~/.terminal-info/plugins/<plugin-name>/

There’s a “self-hosted” style registry in the repo: a small plugins/index.json and one JSON per plugin. The registry pins exact versions—Terminal Info won’t automatically install “latest”. Installs verify:

the author’s Minisign signature
trust a plugin before it executes

Discovery & management:

tinfo plugin search <query>
tinfo plugin install <name>
tinfo plugin trust <name>
tinfo plugin update <name>
tinfo plugin list

Writing a plugin in ~5 minutes (with the SDK)

The project includes a Rust plugin SDK crate, tinfo-plugin. A typical workflow:

tinfo plugin init weather
cd tinfo-weather
cargo run -- --metadata
cargo test

tinfo plugin keygen --output-dir ./keys
tinfo plugin pack
tinfo plugin publish-check

The template ships a release workflow, a manifest (plugin.toml), a smoke test harness, and it automatically supports:

--metadata
--help

Plugin metadata declares plugin_api = 1.

Security expectations

Plugins are third-party executables. They run as your user (no automatic elevation), and if a plugin asks for sudo, treat that as a big red flag.

Repo: https://github.com/T-1234567890/terminal-info

If you’re building plugins or thinking about extending tinfo, jump in, open a PR, share your ideas, or just start experimenting. If you have any questions or any problems, please let me know in the GitHub Discussions or open an Issue!

Building an Extensible Rust CLI Toolbox with a Plugin System

1234567890- — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:55:59 +0000

I recently built a project called terminal-info, a Rust CLI toolbox designed to display useful system and environment information directly in the terminal.

GitHub: https://github.com/T-1234567890/terminal-info

The project originally started as a small terminal weather CLI, but over time, it developed into something closer to a CLI toolbox with plugins.

Instead of being a single-purpose tool, the goal is to make it extensible so developers can add their own tools and diagnostics.

What terminal-info does

Running the CLI shows a simple dashboard with useful information:

┌──────────────────────────────────┐
│           Terminal Info          │
├──────────────────────────────────┤
│ Location: Shenzhen               │
│ Weather: Clear sky, 20.3°C       │
│ Time: 2026-03-16 xx:xx:xx        │
│ Network: xxx.xxx.x.xx            │
│ CPU: 19.3%                       │
│ Memory: 16.2 GiB / 24.0 GiB used │
└──────────────────────────────────┘

The dashboard is only the default overview.

Terminal Info provides many additional commands and plugins
for diagnostics, networking, system information, and developer tools.

Why I added a plugin system

While building the CLI, I realized that many terminal tools are limited by being fixed-feature applications.

For example:

system info tools
monitoring tools
diagnostics utilities

They are useful, but extending them often requires modifying the core codebase.

So I developed terminal-info CLI with a plugin system.

The idea is simple:

core CLI
+ plugin SDK
+ plugin registry

Developers can write plugins that extend the CLI without modifying the main repository.

Security considerations

One challenge with plugin systems is security.

To address this, the project includes:

signed plugin releases
integrity verification
registry review
local trust controls

Users must explicitly trust a plugin before it can run.

Project goals

The long-term goal is to turn terminal-info into a general-purpose CLI toolbox where new functionality can live as plugins.

Instead of replacing existing tools, the idea is to provide a platform where small terminal utilities can coexist and evolve.

Feedback welcome

The project is still early and I would really appreciate feedback from the community, especially on the plugin architecture and developer experience.

GitHub: https://github.com/T-1234567890/terminal-info
Docs: https://github.com/T-1234567890/terminal-info/tree/main/docs

The project is open source and licensed under Apache 2.0.