gloss

A visual pager for the terminal: like less, for images, SVGs, PDFs, STL and 3MF meshes, Markdown, HTML, plain text, JSON, Jupyter notebooks, Word, Excel, Grist, and CSV files.

Try gloss in your browser → — starts with a sample image, including on phone-width screens.

Recorded with ntrecord, including real Kitty graphics. Demo tape.

Install

brew install --cask nimbleterminal/tap/gloss     # macOS or Linux

On Debian or Ubuntu, download the .deb from the latest release and run sudo apt install ./gloss_*_linux_amd64.deb (or _arm64). The release also has archives for macOS, Linux, and Windows: one binary, nothing else to install. With Go, clone the repository and run go install ./cmd/gloss in it to build from source.

Use

gloss photo.png report.pdf model.stl   # page through them
gloss animation.gif                   # plays automatically; Space pauses
gloss --menu *.png                     # choose from a menu
gloss --preview ~/Documents/*          # a menu with a preview pane
gloss ~/Pictures                       # browse a folder
gloss --page 3 report.pdf              # a page of a PDF
cat drawing.svg | gloss                # read from a pipe
gloss -N -S main.go                    # numbered source, long lines scroll sideways

Key
?	Help
q / Q	Quit / leave the last view in scrollback
n / p	Next / previous page, or file
/, n / N	Search text; next / previous result (Esc clears)
[ / ]	Previous / next file
m / o	File menu / browse for a file
+ / -, arrows	Zoom and pan; orbit a mesh
#, :, S on text/source	Line numbers, go to line, wrap / chop long lines
i	Details about the file
e	Export what you see as a PNG
t on text, source, JSON or Markdown	Toggle normal text / typeset view
s on Markdown	Toggle rendered text or typeset view / source
u	Show a selected table URL as a QR code
Space, < / > on a standalone GIF	Pause / resume; slower / faster playback
, / . on a standalone GIF	Step frames; click or drag the bottom bar to seek

Pictures use Kitty graphics where the terminal has them, and colored half-blocks where it does not. Drag files onto the terminal to open them; add --fetch to open a dropped web URL. The file browser offers list, columns, and places layouts, with filtering and Tab completion.

Markdown

Read Markdown as terminal text, or press t for typeset pages with embedded fonts, highlighted code, tables, local pictures, and animated GIFs. Try gloss --typeset README.md. Pages reflow to the terminal width and scroll continuously; +/- zoom, s shows source, and e exports the viewport. Drag over typeset text and press y to copy it. Click links to open them; hover over a typeset link to preview its URL.

Plain text, source code, and JSON also support t and --typeset; normal terminal text remains the default. f previews four font pairs in typeset mode; T previews themes for the pager and document. The native viewer remembers confirmed choices. Scripts can select --font editorial --theme nord; exports ignore saved preferences. See Markdown, fonts, and themes.

From a script or an agent

gloss works without a terminal too: it exports PNGs sized for vision models, extracts text and metadata, and can ask a person for files and a reply. For 3D inspection, export named views as a contact sheet or isolate parts of a 3MF assembly.

gloss --output page.png --page 3 report.pdf   # a PNG, with no terminal
gloss --text report.docx                      # Markdown on stdout
gloss --grep '(?i)total' report.pdf           # the PDF pages that match, and where
gloss --info --json model.3mf                 # what a file says about itself
gloss --view all --output views.png model.3mf # six views in one contact sheet
gloss --serve report.pdf                      # show a document in a browser
gloss --serve --pick                          # ask the user for a file in a browser
gloss --pick-web --prompt "Send a photo and a note" # simple upload page

Without a terminal on stdin, --serve and --pick return session JSON immediately; gloss --resume TOKEN waits for the chosen paths, --status looks without waiting, and --cancel ends the session. gloss skill schema prints the JSON Schema of everything gloss writes as JSON. Add --accept 'image/*' to require images, including SVG. See handing files over.

--pick-web lets a person send files and an optional reply (message in status/resume JSON). Add --listen IP:port and, for a wildcard bind, --advertise-host IP-or-name to pick from another device; foreground terminal sessions show a QR code. LAN mode is opt-in, plain HTTP, and token-guarded: keep the link private and use a trusted network. See the handoff guide above.

gloss also carries a skill that teaches an agent all of this, in the order it needs it: read a file's text, see a page or model as a PNG sized for its vision budget, learn a file's details as JSON, and ask you for a file. Install it for the agents on your machine, from the binary or from the repository:

gloss skill install                           # from the binary, so it matches its flags
npx skills add NimbleTerminal/gloss            # or from the repository, for every agent it finds

Read it on the site, For LLMs, or as SKILL.md.

Documentation

The documentation has the rest: the controls, the formats gloss opens and their limits, exporting for vision models, handing files over, and every option, grouped by what it is for. gloss --help lists the options, and man gloss and tab completion for bash, zsh, and fish work after a Homebrew or .deb install; the release archives carry both too.

To work on gloss, see DEVELOP.md.

License

This gloss project is released under the MIT License, see LICENSE. The licenses of the modules gloss links are in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Copyright (c) 2026 Neomantra Corp.

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Made with ❤️ and 🔥 by the team behind Nimble.Markets.