TUI

talos-tui is the interactive terminal client.

talos-tui

By default it connects over UDS at /tmp/talos.sock. With the quic feature:

talos-tui --remote 192.168.1.50:4433

Views

The TUI has five tabs:

• Topics
• Nodes
• Log
• Joints
• Params

Use number keys 1 through 5 to switch tabs. Tab switches focus between panes. r refreshes the topic and node lists immediately. q quits.

Filtering

Press / to filter the list on the current tab: topic names on Topics, node names (including namespace) on Nodes, parameter names on Params, and message text on Log. Matching is a case-insensitive substring and the list updates as you type. While the prompt is open every key goes to it: ←/→ move the cursor, Backspace deletes, Ctrl-U clears, Enter applies and Esc restores the previous filter. Applying an empty prompt clears the filter.

The active filter is shown in the pane title (on the Log tab, in the filter bar), and the selection moves to stay inside the filtered list.

Connection Behavior

The TUI reconnects when the agent connection is lost. After connecting, it asks for the topic list and subscribes to all discovered topics by default so it can receive live data. While connected, it re-fetches the topic and node lists every 2 seconds, so nodes and topics that appear or go away show up without a reconnect; the selection stays on the same item by name. If you manually toggle topic subscriptions, those choices are kept in the client state and re-applied after reconnect instead of subscribing to every topic again. Topics that disappear from the latest agent topic list are removed from the Topics pane and reconnect request until the agent advertises them again, which also drops their cached sample/count history.

Topics

The Topics tab shows topic names and current message rates. Selecting a topic shows the latest DynValue tree for that topic. Press s anywhere in the Topics tab to subscribe or unsubscribe the selected topic. The list shows the current subscription state, including pending changes and request errors.

Before you customize anything, newly discovered topics inherit the default behavior and are subscribed automatically. After you manually subscribe or unsubscribe any topic, the TUI switches to using your explicit desired set: newly discovered topics stay unsubscribed until you opt into them with s.

If a manual subscribe or unsubscribe request fails, the TUI keeps your desired choice in client state, shows the error on that topic, and retries the desired state after reconnect.

Nodes

The Nodes tab lists ROS 2 nodes and shows publishers, subscribers, and services for the selected node.

Press l to load the selected node’s logger level into the detail pane and L to set it to the next level (DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR, FATAL, then back to DEBUG). See Logger Levels.

Logs

The Log tab displays /rosout entries with timestamp, severity, node, and message fields. It supports severity, node, and text filtering.

Joints

The Joints tab combines URDF joint definitions with live /joint_states data. It can display limits, current position, velocity, effort, and configured poses. When control is configured, it can send joint position and pose commands to the agent.

Params

The Params tab lists the nodes discovered in the graph in the left pane. Select a node and press Enter to load its parameters into the right pane, where each parameter is shown with its current value and type.

Switch focus to the parameter list with Tab, select a parameter, and press e to edit it. Type the new value and press Enter to apply it (the value type is inferred the same way as the CLI set-param command); Esc cancels. After a successful set the list refreshes so the new value is shown.