install

Additional install commands

macOS

Homebrewverified · 100%

brew install chawan

provider-native install command

overview

Package summary

TUI web browser with CSS, inline image and JavaScript support

Project links

Homepage

Commands and aliases

cha
mancha

history

Project history and usage

Chawan is a Unix-like text-mode web browser and pager that aims to implement modern web standards in a self-contained terminal browser, including CSS, optional inline images, and optional JavaScript.

Project history

Chawan is developed primarily in Nim and hosted on SourceHut, with Codeberg listed as another source mirror. The official news archive begins with the 0.2.0 release in June 2025 and shows active 0.3 and 0.4 releases through June 2026.

Adoption history

The official site lists volunteer-maintained stable packages for Alpine Linux, Arch Linux, Debian testing, FreeBSD, Gentoo guru, Homebrew, NixOS, Slackware, and Void Linux, plus unstable packages through AUR, AppImage, Gentoo live ebuild, and Homebrew HEAD. That breadth is unusual for a young terminal browser and makes its packaging story part of the project identity.

How it is used

The `cha` command opens URLs and files, can act as a pager, supports web, SFTP, FTP, gopher, gemini, file, finger, and spartan browsing, and can dump rendered content when stdout is not a TTY. The config documentation defines the canonical `~/.chawan/config.toml` path and XDG/`CHA_DIR` alternatives.

Why package nerds care

Chawan is significant to package nerds because it revives the terminal-browser category with modern packaging friction: image protocols, QuickJS, sandboxing, Nim, multiple Unix distributions, and headless rendering all need to be expressed cleanly in distro formulas. It is also interesting as a modern counterpart to older text browsers such as w3m while using newer terminal capabilities.

Timeline

2025-06: Official news archive lists Chawan 0.2.0.
2025-11: Official news archive lists Chawan 0.3.0.
2026-05: Official news archive lists Chawan 0.4.0.
2026-06: Official news archive lists Chawan 0.4.3.

Related projects

Chame is Chawan's HTML5 parser subproject.
Chagashi is a related pure-Nim character coding library.
Monoucha is a related QuickJS binding generator and runtime glue project.
w3m and vi are cited by the official site as UI inspirations.

Sources

security posture

No protected-tool coverage found yet

No matching local secret-handling manifest was found for chawan. Nucleus package metadata is still published here so future coverage has a stable package URL.

Install behavior

No Homebrew bottle metadata was recorded.

Recommended review

Before unattended agent use, check whether the tool reads plaintext credentials, writes remote state, publishes artifacts, or shells out to plugins.

local files

Configuration and credential file locations

These source-backed paths show where this package keeps local settings or durable credentials. Automic Vault can use them as review targets for secret scanning, migration, and command approval.

Configuration files

Config paths the tool may read or write during local use.

Unix: $CHA_DIR/config.toml${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-~/.config}/chawan/config.toml~/.chawan/config.toml

executables

Installed executables

Command	Kind	Exposure	Note
`cha`	executable	indexed executable	Discovered from the local executable index.
`mancha`	executable	indexed executable	Discovered from the local executable index.

freshness

Version and freshness

These signals separate page generation age, package-manager activity, and upstream release comparison. Version lag is warned only when an evidence URL and comparable versions are present.

page generated2026-08-03

manager version0.4.4

manager updated2026-07-24

local dataunknown

upstreamnot available

latest detectednot detected

okNo freshness warnings were generated.

install metadata

Package metadata

Package key	brew:chawan
Version	0.4.4
Package manager	Homebrew
Homepage	https://sr.ht/~bptato/chawan/
Last updated	2026-07-24T17:46:47Z
Pulse	updated
Bottle	not recorded
Service	none declared

package graph

Links come from deterministic package relationships, av.db category and tag curation, ecosystem matches, and package hub membership.

source trail

Generated from repository data

This page is generated by av-web from the private package SQLite artifact built by scripts/generate-pkg-sqlite.py.

Combined YAML source

View the package source record on GitHub.

combined/chawan.yml

Used sources

Geiger risk classifier
Nucleus package database
curated configuration and credential file locations
curated package history
pkgdb category and tag curation

Install chawan with Homebrew