Hibiscus: a Malaysian-built terminal for AI developers

We didn't set out to build another AI. We started with a question about the developer's side of the screen: what should it feel like to work with an AI coding agent from the terminal?

We built Hibiscus in Malaysia, for developers here. Tools are better when they begin with people you know and work you understand, rather than an imaginary "average developer." We wanted a terminal experience we'd be happy to keep beside our own work.

Hibiscus is a Rust terminal interface for Pi, a coding agent. Pi remains responsible for the agent; Hibiscus gives that work a focused place to happen. The boundary is clear. It lets us pay attention to the interaction without pretending one small CLI needs to replace every part of AI development.

The terminal shouldn't become a waiting room

A long-running reply can make any interface feel like a waiting room. But development doesn't stop just because an answer is still coming. You might notice a missing detail, want to correct the direction, or already know what you want to do next.

In Hibiscus, the composer stays editable while Pi is working. You can steer the current work or queue a follow-up for later. The interface shows when a message is still waiting and when it has actually been delivered. That distinction sounds small, but it's part of how a person knows what's happening—and avoids treating a note in a queue as a message already received.

The lesson for us is simple: don't make people choose between paying attention and preparing their next thought. A useful interface leaves room for both.

These controls aren't about sending more messages. They're about keeping the developer's judgment in the loop: make a correction while the agent is working, choose whether it belongs now or later, and see where it landed. The goal isn't more automation. It's fewer moments spent wondering whether the interface heard you.

Make it easy to return

Developer work rarely fits neatly into one conversation. Sometimes you want to pick up the latest session in a project. Sometimes you want to choose an earlier one. Hibiscus can resume Pi's saved sessions, so starting a blank chat doesn't mean throwing the old work away.

That isn't a flashy AI feature. It's a basic courtesy to the person doing the work. If someone has to reconstruct context every time they reopen a terminal, the tool is asking them to serve the software instead of the other way around.

Keep the boundary honest

We chose to build a terminal interface around Pi rather than a separate agent. That keeps the scope focused: Hibiscus shapes the workspace; Pi handles the agent experience behind it. It also means Hibiscus is for developers who are comfortable working in a terminal and already use Pi. A terminal-first tool isn't the right fit for everyone, and terminal behavior can vary from one setup to another.

Terminals aren't uniform. Some are narrow, some don't support every key sequence, and some are better served by a plain line-mode view. Hibiscus has a fallback for those situations. That brings a tradeoff: a terminal UI can't assume every developer has the same display or keyboard. We'd rather meet a setup where it is than force everyone into one full-screen experience.

That tradeoff is worth being clear about. A product is easier to understand when it says what it is for—and doesn't claim to be universal.

Start with people you know

"Built in Malaysia, for Malaysians" is a starting point, not a fence around who can use the result. We began with developers and workflows close to us. That gave us a real person to picture while making choices about typing, waiting, and returning to work. The same details matter to developers anywhere.

The bigger lesson is that an AI product isn't only the model or the answer it produces. It's also the place where a person reads, decides, intervenes, and carries on. Those moments deserve as much thought as the prompt itself.

Hibiscus is published on GitHub. Explore the project — or see its project page here.