#415·fx

Piping any stdout from node.js to fx stdin causes non-functional UI state

Author: jwhitingCreated May 12, 2026Updated Jun 15, 2026

node -e 'process.stdout.write(JSON.stringify({"a":1}))' | fx

Running this command on MacOS Tahoe, and Ubuntu 22 LTS, with fx installed via homebrew at v39.2.0 shows the json in the TUI, but the interactivity is in a non-functional state. All key presses are rendered at the bottom of the screen and overwrite the highlighted character space reserved for showing the selected json element path.

I surfaced this while trying to use fx to debug output of a node.js CLI utility that outputs json. I assumed this was a bug in my own CLI program, until I realized finally it could be reproduced with even trivial output from node.js. I was unable to have node produce output that did NOT produce the broken UI state when piped to fx. If I pipe to a file, then cat that, no problem:

node -e 'process.stdout.write(JSON.stringify({"a":1}))' > test.json && cat test.json | fx works just fine