kitty/docs/rc_protocol.rst

The kitty remote control protocol
==================================

The kitty remote control protocol is a simple protocol that involves sending
data to kitty in the form of JSON. Any individual command of kitty has the
form::

    <ESC>P@kitty-cmd<JSON object><ESC>\

Where ``<ESC>`` is the byte ``0x1b``. The JSON object has the form::

    {
        "cmd": "command name",
        "version": <kitty version>,
        "no_response": <Optional Boolean>,
        "payload": <Optional JSON object>,
    }

The ``version`` above is an array of the form :code:`[0, 14, 2]`. If you are developing a
standalone client, use the kitty version that you are developing against. Using
a version greater than the version of the kitty instance you are talking to,
will cause a failure.

Set ``no_response`` to ``true`` if you don't want a response from kitty.

The optional payload is a JSON object that is specific to the actual command being sent.
The fields in the object for every command are documented below.

As a quick example showing how easy to use this protocol is, we will implement
the ``@ ls`` command from the shell using only shell tools. First, run kitty
as::

    kitty -o allow_remote_control=socket-only --listen-on unix:/tmp/test

Now, in a different terminal, you can get the pretty printed ``@ ls`` output
with the following command line::

    echo -en '\eP@kitty-cmd{"cmd":"ls","version":[0,14,2]}\e\' | socat - unix:/tmp/test | awk '{ print substr($0, 13, length($0) - 14) }' | jq -c '.data | fromjson' | jq .

.. include:: generated/rc.rst