Missing integration with existing terminal bell mechanisms in the OSC 7501 protocol
Problem
The article presents the OSC 7501 protocol for program status but does not address existing terminal bell mechanisms (e.g., SIGINFO, OSC 3008) or richer status reporting, leaving users uncertain about its ability to replace or complement current solutions, and failing to clearly satisfy demands for simpler notifications and detailed information.
Pain points
- Lack of support or mention for existing terminal bell mechanisms
- Need for more granular program status information
- Demand for simplified notification approaches
Questions to verify
- Do any users explicitly state a desire to replace or abandon existing terminal bell implementations?
- Are users willing to pay for or seek commercial tools based on this protocol?
- Is there a clearly referenced alternative (e.g., OSC 3008) that is mentioned as preferable?
Evidence
quote · @Anonymous
The BSDs have had a version of this for many, many years. If you hit ^T on the terminal, you deliver a SIGINFO to the application you're waiting for. By default, you get the program name, what its blocked on, and info about real/user/sys time and memory use.Starting an emacs window in the fg:% emacs ^T emacs-31.1 64938 [select] 2.89r 0.75u 0.06s 6% 122404k
quote · @Anonymous
The problem `OSC 7501` addresses would slot almost perfectly into [UAPI.15 OSC 3008](https://uapi-group.org/specifications/specs/osc_context/#met...).It's already implemented by `systemd` and is available in Ubuntu 26.04.I'd rather see `OSC 3008` being extended.
quote · @Anonymous
I like the idea, but we already have the terminal bell. In my setup, when an agent is done or needs something, it emits a bell. Based on config, this results in a desktop notification if I’m not in the terminal, or a toast from my multiplexer if I’m in the terminal. The terminal pane gets a colored “bell” icon in its title that is cleared when I attach to it.The total lack of mention of the terminal bell in the article is weird. I think it needs to be addressed for the protocol to be taken seriously. More granular info sounds nice, but also nice is the simplicity of the bell.
quote · @Anonymous
I've been using a poor mans version of this for decades.My iTerm2 is configured to show activity, new-output and visual bell in the tab. On Linux I have an approximation for WezTerm.I have a bell command that I can use in a pipeline or sequence to produce the bell on events I'm interested in. Trivial case is when a program finishes.I have a fancy alias that can be used in a shell command sequence and which produces different sounds depending on the exit status of the preceding command in addition to sending the terminal bell.
Disclaimer: this card is distilled by AI from community discussions as “pain point evidence”. It is a starting point for need analysis and validation, not a “validated market need”. AI has analytical limits; please open the original discussion above to manually verify before key decisions.