I’ve decided to move on from Ink.
I love telling the story how I started Ink. Sindre me were on vacation, on a remote Thai island, drinking heavily at night. Back in 2017, were working together on AVA. AVA has become a complex project and we were tired of joining strings to generate that pretty output that AVA had.
That’s when I pitched Sindre the idea of using React components to make this easier for us and he loved it. The first version of Ink wasn’t actually using React, but instead was a re-implementation of React compatible with the terminal. I didn’t know how to create a custom React reconciler, so I figured what the hell, I’d just create my own React.
Fast forward to now, Ink has become a lot more advanced. It’s powered by React via a custom reconciler, making it compatible with thousands of community React libraries. With Yoga, developers can use Flexbox layout to build good-looking CLIs in a simple and fun way.
I never expected Ink to take off. However, in 2024, big players like Cloudflare, Linear, Terraform and Shopify use Ink in their CLIs. This is wild.
I owe Ink the greatest career opportunities I’ve had. It literally changed my professional and personal life for the better.
The time has come though to move on from Ink. Since russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, everything in my life revolves around the war. And anything else has lost all meaning to me. I no longer have the mental and physical capacity to maintain Ink and give it the attention it deserves.
I offered Sindre to take over and fortunately he agreed. I know that Ink will be in the best possible hands it could ever end up in. Effective today, I’ll transfer all access to Ink, Ink UI, Pastel and related projects to him.
I’ll dearly miss Ink and the community around it. It has been a great journey.