Research: how should DropTerm’s documentation improve, measured against how comparable projects document themselves?

Date: 2026-10-23 Question: DropTerm ships a 16-page docs/ tree, a README with a release-install walk, a cargo-test gate pinning every config key to docs/configuration.md, and a link-checked Jekyll site that GitHub Pages never serves. What do the closest peers — the pop-os COSMIC family, community cosmic-ext-* apps, the drop-down terminals, and the gold-standard terminal emulators — actually document, and which of their practices should DropTerm adopt next?

TL;DR

DropTerm’s documentation is already the deepest in its immediate peer group — richer than every pop-os COSMIC app, every community cosmic-ext README checked, and the drop-down terminals Guake, Yakuake, and Terra — and its configuration reference is competitive with the gold-standard terminals; the five gaps that matter are (1) not a single screenshot or demo anywhere, (2) a packaging section that documents only the release tarball while its own packaging research record rules native deb/AUR/nix “in progress”, (3) a polished Jekyll site that cannot be reached because GitHub Pages is disabled in repo settings, (4) no task-oriented “how-to” layer (Diátaxis: the tree is reference + explanation, with one how-to hiding in the README), and (5) no FAQ, changelog, or sample config file — all of which the gold-standard peers ship and all of which are cheap here because the answers already exist in DropTerm’s own pages. The pop-os family is the wrong benchmark: cosmic-term, cosmic-files, cosmic-edit, and cosmic-player all carry minimal READMEs with no installation instructions at all, so DropTerm’s baseline already exceeds the house convention. The instructive comparisons are kitty, WezTerm, foot, Ghostty, and Alacritty on structure, and Guake/tdrop on packaging channels and demos. Eleven ranked recommendations follow; none conflict with the docs rules in AGENTS.md (the config-key gate and just docs-check keep passing; two recommendations explicitly extend them).

The organizing lens is Diátaxis — used here purely as a framework (tutorials / how-to guides / reference / explanation as four user-need-matched forms; “a systematic approach to technical documentation authoring”), not as an authority about terminals.

Findings

Each finding cites the exact source fetched. Peer sources were read 2026-10-23; DropTerm paths are from the working tree at the same date.

1. The pop-os COSMIC family documents almost nothing — DropTerm’s README already exceeds the family convention

• cosmic-term (github.com/pop-os/cosmic-term, fetched 2026-10-23): README is two sections — a ~3-paragraph intro (“COSMIC terminal emulator, built using alacritty_terminal”) and a 2-sentence “Color Schemes” section. No screenshot, no installation instructions, no keybinding or config docs, no badges, no FAQ, no license section in the README body.
• cosmic-files (github.com/pop-os/cosmic-files): one-line pitch (“File manager for the COSMIC desktop environment”), build-from-source only (clone / cargo build --release / cargo run --release), no features, no config docs, no screenshots; a “Community and Contributing” section and a license section (“This project is licensed under GPLv3”).
• cosmic-edit (github.com/pop-os/cosmic-edit): one-line pitch, an embedded screenshot (screenshot-1.png — the only visual asset in the family), pre-alpha disclaimer, build-from-source, “Testing” and “Clippy Lints” sections.
• cosmic-player (github.com/pop-os/cosmic-player): placeholder — “WIP COSMIC media player”, nothing else.

Versus DropTerm’s README.md: one-line pitch, layer-shell explanation, per-arch release-tarball install with checksum verification, automated dependency gate, shortcut-setup walk, a 16-page Documentation index, feature list, known risks, non-goals, credits. The only family practices DropTerm lacks are the cosmic-edit screenshot and the cosmic-files “Community and Contributing” section.

2. Community cosmic-ext apps ship screenshots and a website link; documentation depth is README-only

• cosmic-ext-tweaks (github.com/cosmic-utils/cosmic-ext-tweaks, fetched 2026-10-23): tagline (“Beyond the limits of your desktop”), two screenshots (light/dark, under res/screenshots/), dependencies + build-from-source (just build-release / sudo just install), license section, a Flathub button, and a project website link (tweaks.edfloreshz.dev). No feature list, no config docs.
• cosmic-ext-calculator (github.com/cosmic-utils/cosmic-ext-calculator): one-line pitch, light- and dark-mode screenshots, one feature section (“History”), no installation instructions at all.
• cosmic-ext-quake-terminal (github.com/M0Rf30/cosmic-ext-quake-terminal): the closest sibling project — a Guake/Yakuake-style drop-down for COSMIC that wraps an external terminal. README-only docs but task-shaped: “How it works”, install from source only, a thorough configuration section (config path, a six-row table of supported terminals with per-terminal flags, extra args), a keyboard-shortcut section with two setup paths and a candid known-issue (the same Shift-modified shortcut and GlobalShortcuts-portals gaps DropTerm documents), usage/debug logging, license. No screenshot.

Convention takeaway: in the cosmic-ext world, every polished project ships at least one screenshot (cosmic-edit, tweaks, calculator), and the more mature ones link a website. DropTerm — whose whole value proposition is a visual gesture (a terminal sliding from the screen edge) — ships none.

3. Drop-down terminals: demos and per-distro install pages are the norm; Yakuake and Terra defer to almost nothing

• Guake (github.com/Guake/guake, fetched 2026-10-23): README with pitch, a screenshot under “What it looks like ?”, three badges (GitHub Actions CI, ReadTheDocs, Weblate), and pointers to a homepage (guake.github.io, with an explicit “Do NOT use the domain guake.org” warning) and a ReadTheDocs site (guake.readthedocs.io). The installation lives on the RTD page (user/installing.html), organized per channel: Debian/Ubuntu (apt, plus a PPA), Fedora (dnf), Arch and Manjaro (pacman), then pipx/pip install --user with a warning against bare pip, then from source with the PBR/git-history caveat. It also ships NEWS.rst plus a releasenotes/ directory.
• Yakuake (github.com/KDE/yakuake): README is a pitch (“a drop-down terminal emulator based on KDE Konsole technology”), maintainer, links (official site apps.kde.org/yakuake, bug tracker, invent source browser), “Basic build and installation instructions” (cmake/make), and the license. No screenshots, no keybinding docs in the README — KDE defers to the site/handbook.
• Terra (github.com/ozcan/terra-terminal): abandoned (“This repository is outdated please use Sixdsn’s fork”); README documents install channels by distro (Ubuntu PPA, Arch AUR, Gentoo) and nothing else. Evidence that per-distro channel lists predate maturity — but also that unmaintained channel lists rot.
• tdrop (github.com/noctuid/tdrop): the best-practice end for a scripted drop-down: two demo GIFs under “Demos”, an “Advantages Over Other Dropdown Terminals” feature section, install documented by channel (“in the AUR as tdrop-git and is packaged for Void Linux”, plus sudo make install), a basic keybinding example (sxhkd), flag documentation deferred to the manpage, dedicated “Troubleshooting” and “Why Not Use X?” explanation sections, and Wayland limitations stated up front (“I do not recommend using tdrop in Wayland”).

4. Gold-standard terminals: full doc sites with search, per-option references, FAQs, changelogs

• kitty (sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty, fetched 2026-10-23): a Sphinx site whose navigation runs Quickstart → Install (binary / build) → Overview (design philosophy) → Configuring kitty (kitty.conf split into per-topic subsections — Fonts, Scrollback, Mouse, Tab bar, Keyboard shortcuts — plus a “Sample kitty.conf”) → “All mappable actions” → ~25 kitten pages → Remote control → Sessions → Shell integration → an ~18-entry FAQ (“I catted a binary file and now kitty is hung?”) → a demo video with timestamped chapters → a single Changelog page listing every version from 0.4.0 (2017) to 0.49.2 (2026-10-01) with date anchors.
• WezTerm (wezterm.org; note wezfurlong.org/wezterm now serves only a redirect stub, “Click here to go to wezterm.org”): an MkDocs Material site with search (“press S or click on the magnifying glass icon”), Features sub-pages, per-platform Downloads, Configuration sub-pages, a browsable Color Schemes index, Recipes (task-oriented pages), a “Full Config & Lua Reference”, a CLI reference, and a “Get Help” group holding Troubleshooting, F.A.Q., Getting Help, Contributing, Change Log, Sponsor. One screenshot on the homepage.
• foot (codeberg.org/dnkl/foot): the README-only counterpoint that still goes deep — Features, Installing (deferred to INSTALL.md), Configuration (deferred to foot.ini(5) man page), Troubleshooting (deferred to the wiki), Shortcuts tables (Keyboard — Normal mode / Scrollback search / URL mode — Mouse, Touchscreen), Server mode, URLs, Shell integration sub-sections, “No AI / LLM policy”, Contributing, Code of Conduct, Contact, Sponsoring, Credits, License. A Repology badge tracks its packaging across distros; the repo ships CHANGELOG.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.
• Alacritty (github.com/alacritty/alacritty): pitch, a promo image, features split to docs/features.md, install via package managers + prebuilt release binaries + INSTALL.md, configuration via “man 5 alacritty” or the website, a README FAQ (performance claims; why tabs/splits aren’t implemented), license. CHANGELOG.md and CONTRIBUTING.md in-repo.
• Ghostty (ghostty.org/docs and ghostty.org/docs/config/reference): homepage leads with the tagline (“a fast, feature-rich, and cross-platform terminal emulator that uses platform-native UI and GPU acceleration”) and “Featured Documentation” (Keybindings, Color Theme, Configuration, Terminal API). The configuration docs open with a “Zero Configuration Philosophy” (“Zero configuration required to get up and running”), document file locations, reload keybinding, offline reference (ghostty +show-config --default --docs), and link a full option reference whose entries are per-option headings with prose defaults and “Available since: 1.2.0” version annotations.

5. Diátaxis reading of DropTerm’s tree: reference and explanation are excellent; tutorials and how-tos are nearly absent

Diátaxis (diataxis.fr, fetched 2026-10-23) separates documentation by user need into four forms: tutorials (learning-oriented, guided first use), how-to guides (task-oriented, “how do I…?”), reference (information-oriented, looked up while working), and explanation (understanding-oriented, why it works). Mapping DropTerm:

kitty (Quickstart), Ghostty (“Get Started”, Zero Configuration Philosophy), and Guake’s RTD installing page all provide the first-run path; WezTerm maintains a dedicated Recipes section for the how-to quadrant. DropTerm’s nearest equivalent is the README, which works, but the docs site’s “Start here” mixes forms.

6. What DropTerm has today, precisely (grounding)

• README.md — pitch, install (v0.2.0 tarball with sha256 verify + ARM variant + vendor note + uninstall), Status line, dependency-gated build, shortcut setup, a 16-entry Documentation index, feature list (four thematic bullets), Known risks pointer, Non-goals, Credits. No image anywhere; no badges. ROADMAP is linked (README.md line 33 links ROADMAP.md; also linked from docs/configuration.md’s reserved-keys section and docs/index.md).
• docs/ — 16 markdown pages: animation, applet, architecture, autosuggestions, bell, cli, configuration, development, index, keybindings, known-issues, sessions, settings, status-bar, testing, theming.
• docs/assets/icon.svg — the only image asset in the tree; used exactly once, as the Jekyll favicon (docs/_layouts/default.html line 8). No README or docs page embeds it or any other image.
• docs/configuration.md — per-key tables with Values / Default / What it does columns, live-vs-restart semantics stated per key group, hand-edit echo examples, profiles RON shape with a per-field “Takes effect” column, parked/reserved keys. The strongest single page in the peer set; what it lacks versus kitty/Ghostty/WezTerm is a single complete sample config file and per-key “since version” annotations.
• docs/keybindings.md — action / default chords / action-id table plus the layout rationale; stronger than foot’s README shortcut tables and matches kitty’s “All mappable actions” intent.
• docs/known-issues.md — 5 upstream-linked rough edges (upstream bug tracker items), not user troubleshooting.
• docs/testing.md — a 263-line manual checklist; no peer ships anything comparable publicly (cosmic family keeps TESTING.md unlinked; foot and Alacritty keep CONTRIBUTING-level guidance).
• Docs-site mechanics — docs/_config.yml (Jekyll for GitHub Pages: url: https://l1br3-io.github.io, baseurl: /cosmic-ext-dropterm, five plugins), docs/_layouts/default.html (a hand-rolled sidebar layout: grouped navigation with active-link highlighting, dark-mode CSS, responsive off-canvas nav, an “Improve this page on GitHub” edit link), .github/workflows/pages.yml (configure-pages → jekyll-build-pages → upload → deploy-pages; PRs build without deploying). docs/_site/ is gitignored (.gitignore line 12; git ls-files docs/_site is empty) — only the sources are committed. GitHub Pages is not enabled in the repository’s settings (maintainer-known context; a prior pages.yml run failed at the configure-pages step), so none of this is reachable: the published URL appears only inside docs/_config.yml itself — the README links docs pages as GitHub files, and docs/index.md links back to the GitHub README/ROADMAP. The layout has no search (static HTML, no JS search). Local preview exists: just docs-serve (Docker-based Jekyll).
• Link and drift gates — justfile docs-check (every internal markdown link and anchor across README.md, ROADMAP.md, and docs/ must resolve; external links out of scope), and the cargo test pinning every serialized DropTermConfig key to docs/configuration.md (every_config_key_is_documented). New root-level or docs/ markdown must satisfy both; a new file outside those paths (e.g. a root CHANGELOG.md) would not be link-checked unless added to the recipe.
• Release notes — .github/workflows/release.yml uses gh release --generate-notes (auto-generated); there is no CHANGELOG.md and no in-repo release-notes file. ROADMAP.md (checkboxes per version, with “V4: improve docs” open) carries the roadmap role.
• Packaging — README documents the tarball and source only; docs/research/packaging-and-release.md rules “Native deb/AUR/nix following the System76 release convention … Flathub for the applet only” with status “In progress” in docs/research/README.md; the applet Flatpak path is documented in docs/applet.md (packaging/flatpak/, just applet-flatpak-build).

Comparison table

Dimensions are the research question’s (a)–(l). ✅ present, ⚠️ partial, ❌ absent; DropTerm column cites the repo path.

Recommendations

Ranked by impact vs effort. Each names the peer evidence and the DropTerm file to change. All are additive except R3’s fallback branch; none break the two gates.

R1. Ship a screenshot (then a short toggle demo GIF) in the README

Peer: cosmic-edit embeds screenshot-1.png (github.com/pop-os/cosmic-edit); cosmic-ext-tweaks and cosmic-ext-calculator ship light/dark pairs; Guake has “What it looks like ?”; Alacritty a promo image; tdrop two demo GIFs; kitty a timestamped demo video. Every polished project in the cosmic-ext cohort shows the product.

DropTerm: README.md has no image; the only asset is docs/assets/icon.svg, referenced solely as the Jekyll favicon (docs/_layouts/default.html:8). A drop-down terminal’s core feature is visual — the pitch paragraph describes a slide animation in prose (docs/animation.md) that one GIF would replace.

Effort/impact: capture needs real COSMIC hardware (per docs/testing.md the runtime only exists there); a static screenshot is low effort, a toggle GIF medium. Highest first-impression impact in the whole list. Store under docs/assets/ beside icon.svg; embed in README.md near the pitch (GitHub renders repo-relative images, so no site dependency).

R2. Decide the GitHub Pages site: enable it, or fall back and stop paying site tax

Peer: Guake publishes ReadTheDocs and badges it; kitty/WezTerm/Ghostty publish searchable doc sites; even cosmic-ext-tweaks links a website. Every project that invested in a docs tree serves it.

DropTerm: the entire pipeline exists and is good — docs/_config.yml (URL, permalinks, plugins), a hand-rolled layout with sidebar navigation, dark mode, and per-page edit links (docs/_layouts/default.html), the workflow .github/workflows/pages.yml, and a Docker preview (just docs-serve) — but GitHub Pages is not enabled in repo settings, so the site is unreachable and the URL appears nowhere outside docs/_config.yml. Either flip the settings toggle (then: link the site from README.md’s Documentation section — an external link, so just docs-check’s internal-link scope is unaffected) or retire the workflow and the site chrome. The one thing not to keep is the current state: a maintained-but-unreachable site whose build fails in CI.

Effort/impact: enabling is a settings toggle plus one README link — minimal effort, and it unlocks everything docs/ already contains (the sidebar nav groups Reference/In depth/Contributing/Decisions are exactly the right shape). Search would still be absent (static Jekyll, no plugin) — acceptable at 16 pages; WezTerm-scale search matters at WezTerm scale.

R3. Add a how-to layer: task pages or a “Common tasks” section (Diátaxis how-to quadrant)

Peer: WezTerm maintains a dedicated Recipes section (task-oriented pages); kitty has a Quickstart; Ghostty a “Get Started” + “Zero Configuration Philosophy” first-run path; Guake’s RTD walks the toggle hotkey setup per desktop. Diátaxis names the gap directly: how-to guides are task-oriented pages for “how do I…?” needs, distinct from reference.

DropTerm: docs/index.md’s “Start here” links straight to Configuration/Keybindings/CLI — reference pages. The real tasks are already answered but buried: make it drop from the bottom (docs/configuration.md Geometry), set up SSH profiles (docs/configuration.md#profiles), script it from the shell (docs/cli.md), keep it visible while reading (Behavior toggles). A single new docs/howto.md (or three to five short task pages) linking into the reference pages — not duplicating them — fills the quadrant.

Effort/impact: low effort (material exists, needs curation and links); medium-high impact for new users. Per AGENTS.md, any new page must be added to README.md’s Documentation index and passes just docs-check.

R4. Add an FAQ page seeded from questions the docs already answer

Peer: kitty ships an ~18-entry FAQ page; Alacritty a README FAQ section; WezTerm a F.A.Q. under Get Help; foot a wiki Troubleshooting section.

DropTerm: docs/known-issues.md tracks five upstream compositor issues — real troubleshooting of user-side confusion lives scattered across pages: “why does my Shift-modified shortcut not fire?” (docs/known-issues.md), “why must the toggle be a COSMIC custom shortcut at all?” (README + known-issues), “why does the terminal hide when I click away — can I stop it?” (hide_on_focus_loss, docs/configuration.md), “why don’t autosuggestions appear over ssh?” (docs/autosuggestions.md), “why no Flatpak?” (README Non-goals + known-issues), “how do I get two independent instances for development?” (docs/development.md). Ten to twelve Q&As linking into the pages is a page, not a project.

Effort/impact: low effort, high search-and-support payoff. Same AGENTS.md rules as R3.

R5. Document third-party packaging channels when they land; link Repology now

Peer: Guake’s install page is organized per channel (Debian/Ubuntu apt + PPA, Fedora dnf, Arch/Manjaro pacman, pipx, source); tdrop documents “the AUR as tdrop-git … packaged for Void Linux”; Alacritty lists package managers + prebuilt binaries + INSTALL.md; foot links a Repology badge that tracks its presence across distros automatically.

DropTerm: README.md documents the tarball and source; its own docs/research/packaging-and-release.md verdict is “Native deb/AUR/nix following the System76 release convention” with status “In progress” in docs/research/README.md. When those channels land, add them as a short channel list (exactly Guake’s shape). Immediately, a Repology link in the README costs one line and auto-tracks whatever third parties package — Terra’s rotted PPA/AUR/Gentoo list is the cautionary tale for hand-listing channels without an aggregator.

Effort/impact: trivial now, low when channels land; medium impact (install friction is the first wall). Immutable-record rule untouched: the research record stays as-is; only README.md gains the channel list.

R6. Generate and ship a complete sample config, kept honest by the existing test gate

Peer: kitty ships a “Sample kitty.conf” and per-tool sample configs; foot ships /etc/xdg/foot/foot.ini as a template the README points to; Ghostty exposes ghostty +show-config --default --docs (“the full default configuration with docs”).

DropTerm: docs/configuration.md documents all 43 keys, but a user hand-editing for the first time sees one-file-per-key echo examples, not one complete artifact. Since the every_config_key_is_documented test already walks every serialized DropTermConfig key against the page, extend that same test to emit (or verify) a generated docs/assets/config-sample/ snapshot — default value per key in file order — so the sample can never drift from the code. Alternatively document a cosmic-ext-dropterm config dump-style recipe if a CLI verb is ever added.

Effort/impact: medium (touches the test), medium impact; closes the one real depth gap versus kitty/foot/Ghostty. Flag: the sample must live where just docs-check can see it or be generated, not hand-maintained.

R7. Add per-key “since” annotations (or version-pinned docs claims) as versions accumulate

Peer: Ghostty’s option reference annotates availability per option (“Available since: 1.2.0”); kitty’s changelog date-anchors every feature so any option’s history is one hop away.

DropTerm: docs/configuration.md distinguishes parked/reserved keys but carries no version information; the README’s Status section names v0.2.0. With one released version this is cheap to start (everything is “since 0.1/0.2”) and expensive to retrofit later. A Since column, or a note section per release in ROADMAP.md, suffices.

Effort/impact: low now, annoying later; low-medium impact. No gate conflict — additive column.

R8. Add a lightweight changelog or curated release notes

Peer: foot and Alacritty ship CHANGELOG.md; Guake ships NEWS.rst and a releasenotes/ directory; kitty and WezTerm maintain changelog pages. Every gold-standard peer gives release notes a durable, linkable home.

DropTerm: .github/workflows/release.yml uses --generate-notes (GitHub’s auto-list); notes live only on the release page, unedited. Duplicating kitty’s changelog is overkill; a docs/releases.md with one curated section per release (or hand-polished release notes per tag) is enough, and ROADMAP.md (already linked from README.md line 33) stays the forward-looking complement.

Effort/impact: low; medium impact for packaged users and for R7. Flag: if the changelog lives at repo root it is outside just docs-check’s file list (justfile docs-check covers README.md, ROADMAP.md, docs/**) — put it under docs/ or extend the recipe, or its links rot unnoticed.

R9. Fix the thin/duplicated page: docs/animation.md

DropTerm: docs/animation.md is 5 lines whose lead sentence repeats verbatim inside the second paragraph (“Showing and hiding slide the whole content column in from, and back out toward, the anchored screen edge over about 130 ms” appears twice) — an editing artifact of extracting the lead. Its content is otherwise complete; it needs one deduplicating pass, not new material. (Peers have no analogous page to cite — this is internal-quality housekeeping found by the survey.)

Effort/impact: trivial; small. Included because it is the one page that reads unfinished.

R10. Add CI and license badges — or consciously skip, citing family convention

Peer: Guake carries CI + ReadTheDocs + Weblate badges; foot a Repology badge. The pop-os COSMIC family and every cosmic-ext app carry none.

DropTerm: none (README.md). The family convention is no badges, so this is optional; if CI status is worth signaling (.github/workflows/ci.yml exists), one badge is one line. Lowest rank on purpose — the cohort DropTerm sits in does not do this.

Effort/impact: trivial; low.

R11. Optional: a CONTRIBUTING pointer

Peer: foot ships CONTRIBUTING.md + CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md and states a contribution policy (“Use of generative AI/LLMs is strictly forbidden…”); Alacritty ships CONTRIBUTING.md; cosmic-files has a “Community and Contributing” section.

DropTerm: the contributor path exists and is good (docs/development.md → docs/testing.md → docs/architecture.md, with AGENTS.md governing agents), but there is no one-file pointer a first-time contributor can find. A short “Contributing” section in README.md linking those three pages (the cosmic-files shape) is enough; a separate CONTRIBUTING.md duplicating them would violate the fewer-larger-files bias in AGENTS.md.

Effort/impact: trivial; low-medium.

Rejected alternatives

• Adopt the pop-os README shape as a target. Rejected: the family READMEs are minimal because Pop ships the apps in Pop!_OS itself; DropTerm is installed by hand and needs the install/shortcut walks it already has. The family is the baseline to exceed, not match.
• Migrate the docs to mdBook/MkDocs with search. Rejected for now: the Jekyll pipeline and layout already exist and are good; at 16 pages search is not the bottleneck (WezTerm needs it at hundreds of pages). Revisit if the site grows past ~30 pages or R3 adds many task pages.
• Hand-maintain a per-distro package table today. Rejected until the ruled deb/AUR/nix channels actually exist: a table of channels that are not live is worse than none (Terra’s rotted PPA/AUR/Gentoo list). Repology (R5) covers the interim.
• Full Diátaxis reorganization — four top-level quadrants. Rejected as ceremony for a 16-page tree; only the missing how-to layer (R3) is load-bearing. Renaming existing reference pages into a tutorials/how-to/reference/explanation hierarchy would churn every inbound link for zero reader gain.
• Editing existing research records or the decision-log index to reflect this survey. Rejected: records are immutable and status lives in the index (docs/research/README.md); this record simply joins it, and the main session adds the row.

Sources

• pop-os COSMIC family (read 2026-10-23):
  • cosmic-term — https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-term
  • cosmic-files — https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-files
  • cosmic-edit — https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-edit
  • cosmic-player — https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-player
• Community cosmic-ext (read 2026-10-23):
  • cosmic-ext-tweaks — https://github.com/cosmic-utils/cosmic-ext-tweaks
  • cosmic-ext-calculator — https://github.com/cosmic-utils/cosmic-ext-calculator
  • cosmic-ext-quake-terminal — https://github.com/M0Rf30/cosmic-ext-quake-terminal
  • GitHub search “cosmic-ext” (cosmic-utils org discovery) — https://github.com/search?q=cosmic-ext&type=repositories
• Drop-down terminals (read 2026-10-23):
  • Guake README — https://github.com/Guake/guake; homepage — https://guake.github.io; installation docs — https://guake.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/installing.html
  • Yakuake README — https://github.com/KDE/yakuake; official site — https://apps.kde.org/yakuake
  • Terra — https://github.com/ozcan/terra-terminal (marked outdated, pointing to Sixdsn’s fork)
  • tdrop — https://github.com/noctuid/tdrop
• Gold-standard terminals (read 2026-10-23):
  • kitty docs — https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/ (navigation, FAQ, changelog structure)
  • WezTerm docs — https://wezterm.org/ (redirect stub at wezfurlong.org/wezterm confirmed 2026-10-23)
  • foot README — https://codeberg.org/dnkl/foot
  • Alacritty README — https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty
  • Ghostty docs — https://ghostty.org/docs and https://ghostty.org/docs/config/reference
• Framework (read 2026-10-23): Diátaxis — https://diataxis.fr/ (cited as the organizing lens only)
• DropTerm working tree (read 2026-10-23): README.md, ROADMAP.md, AGENTS.md, justfile (docs-check, docs-serve), .gitignore, .github/workflows/pages.yml, .github/workflows/release.yml, packaging/flatpak/ (listing), docs/_config.yml, docs/_layouts/default.html, docs/assets/icon.svg (sole image), docs/index.md, docs/configuration.md, docs/keybindings.md, docs/cli.md, docs/known-issues.md, docs/settings.md, docs/status-bar.md, docs/sessions.md, docs/animation.md, docs/theming.md, docs/bell.md, docs/autosuggestions.md, docs/applet.md, docs/development.md, docs/testing.md, docs/architecture.md, docs/research/README.md, docs/research/packaging-and-release.md, docs/research/terminal-autocomplete.md (format precedent). Context that GitHub Pages is disabled in repo settings (prior pages.yml failure at configure-pages) was supplied by the maintainer alongside this survey task; the on-disk evidence for the intended site is docs/_config.yml + .github/workflows/pages.yml.