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shipped

Terminal as Navigation

Prototyping a persistent terminal UI that doubles as site navigation.

ReactJavaScriptsessionStorageAstro

Problem

Most portfolio interactions are forgettable and disconnected from the work being presented.

Approach

Built a virtual filesystem, command parser, and sessionStorage restore layer that map shell navigation to real routes.

Result

The terminal became a persistent navigation surface and the site's main differentiator.

The idea: what if the terminal on a portfolio site wasn’t just a gimmick, but the actual navigation? Type cd ~/projects and you navigate to the projects page. Your command history survives the page transition. The terminal knows where you are.

This started as a simple command palette experiment but evolved into a full virtual filesystem with path resolution, cd .., cat, ls -la, tree, tab completion, and persistent state via sessionStorage.

The tricky part was the navigation handoff: when cd resolves to a directory with a URL, the terminal saves its entire state (lines + history) to sessionStorage, triggers window.location.href, and the new page’s terminal instance restores from that saved state. The boot sequence only plays on first visit — subsequent page loads feel instant.

This shipped on arthur3.com and is now the primary way people interact with the site. About 40% of visitors try at least one command.