BHOOT.SH — কে আছো? A Bengali Haunted Terminal Possessed by Petni, Mechho Bhoot & Friends

This is a submission for the Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 4: Ghost in the Machine

What I Built

BHOOT.SH — কে আছো? — A Bengali Haunted Terminal

A light, scripted terminal that is possessed. It wraps your shell and whispers back using your own history — ~/.bash_history, git log, and deleted files you thought were gone.

I interpreted Ghost in the Machine through Bengali folklore. Not generic Halloween, but the bhoots I grew up with in Kolkata — Petni (white saree, feet backwards, under the oshoth tree), Mechho Bhoot (fish-loving ghost from the ponds behind your bari, "maachh khabo..."), Skondhokata (headless, carrying its own head, "amar matha kothay?"), and Begho Bhoot (tiger ghost of Sundarbans).

Type summon petni, bhootlog (what happened at 3:13 AM while you slept), cat purono_chithi.txt (old letters Git remembers). Every command raises your POSSESSION %. At 75%+ the screen glitches.

Inspired by Día de los Muertos — our digital ancestors (old commits, deleted photos, dead projects) deserve to stay home, not in someone else's cloud.

Demo

Live: https://bhoot-sh.netlify.app

Try: help → ls → summon petni → bhootlog → share (generates your possession card)

13kb, offline after first load, share card is a 1080x1080 canvas generated locally — আমি 87% POSSESSED

Code

Structure:

bhoot-sh/
├── index.html      # Single file haunted terminal (13kb gzipped)
├── netlify.toml    # Netlify config
├── _redirects      # SPA fallback
└── cover.png       # This cover

Local open-weight sister build (not live, but built):
Python + Textual TUI + Ollama (Llama 3.1 8B / Qwen2.5 7B via llama.cpp) that reads your real ~/.zsh_history locally. 100% offline séance. No data leaves your machine.

ollama run llama3.1:8b
python bhoot.py --haunt ~/.zsh_history

Stack: Vanilla JS terminal, no framework, no backend. CRT scanlines, possession meter, idle whispers, canvas share card with Web Share API.

How I Built It

Web demo (Netlify): Pure static — HTML/CSS/JS, 100% client-side, scripted ghost lines. Deployable anywhere, even IPFS. No API keys.

Real CLI version (same architecture):

• Open-weight model: Llama 3.1 8B / Qwen2.5 7B via Ollama + llama.cpp — runs 100% locally
• Harness: Python + Textual wrapping zsh, reads ~/.bash_history, git log, local file timestamps
• Local inference: No internet after model pull. Works during load-shedding at 03:13 AM in Kolkata
• Lore: Ghost persona fine-tuned with Bengali bhoot stories (prompt-level, not generic safety filter)

The web demo simulates the same logic with pre-written responses to keep it light for Netlify. The architecture is identical — the ghost lives on YOUR machine.

Why Does Open Innovation Matter?

1. Privacy: Your terminal history is your most sensitive data. You'd never pipe ~/.bash_history to a closed API. Open-weight local models make this possible — the ghost lives on your machine, not in a data center.
2. Offline séance: Like a real séance, it works with the lights and internet off. Closed ghost-as-a-service dies when the startup dies. My bhoot stays.
3. Own your folklore: I can make my ghost speak Banglish, whisper "ke acho?" and "maachh khabo..." — a closed model with corporate filters would never.
4. Día de los Muertos for code: Honoring digital ancestors should be private and permanent. Old commits and deleted files shouldn't be uploaded to a service that might disappear. Open keeps ancestors at home.

A closed API could never do this — not privately, not offline, not in Bengali.

The Spirit of It

This is for every Bengali kid who was told "raat 3te Petni beroy, ghumao" and then grew up to be the dev who actually stays up till 3 AM in the terminal.

It's a love letter to Kolkata — Victoria Memorial at night, rain on the window, a CRT buzzing in a mess room in 2005, and a story that won't leave your shell history.

If your terminal starts typing on its own tonight...

Don't clear.

Listen.

কে আছো...?