Writing a Plugin in Another Language

Please see the up-to-date documentation for the most recent features.

This page is very much a work in progress! If you're familiar with WASM and Rust, then understanding the zellij-tile library is a great place to start.

In short, Zellij expects your WASI module to export three functions:

• main() :: called once on plugin load
• update() :: called after event subscriptions are triggered
• render(i32, i32) :: called when the plugin needs to be rendered

The render(i32, i32) function is passed the size of the plugin pane, first the rows, then the columns – e.g. render(rows, cols).

Complex types are sent over stdin as JSON objects. Before update() is called, Zellij writes an event to the plugin's stdin that can be read back in the update() function.

Host functions, for communicating with Zellij, are best documented by the extern section of zellij-tile::shim and are found in a WASM module named zellij.

Help Add More Language Guides! If you'd like to contribute, either drop us a line on Discord or open a PR improving these docs!