A modern TUI browser for the finger protocol.
Finger is one of the oldest things on the internet (RFC 1288, TCP port 79): ask a server about a person and it tells you who they are, whether they're logged in, and whatever they've left in their .plan file.
It faded once the web arrived, but never died. On the small internet, tilde communities and pubnixes still run finger servers, and people keep a .plan as a slow, personal microblog. lookit is for poking around that world.
finger @host has always listed who's around. When a response looks like a user list, lookit makes it selectable. You can follow links inside responses, and the in-session history lets you go back without sending another query. lookit turns one-off finger commands into a browsing session.
Run lookit without a target and it opens on a built-in catalog of finger communities and services, with your own bookmarks above it. Give it a target and it opens there instead.
It adapts to light and dark terminals and leaves the mouse free for native selection and copy.
Take a .deb, .rpm, or archive for your platform from the Releases page. These need no Go, which matters on a tilde or pubnix box where the system Go is often too old.
The Linux packages install the manual for you. From an archive, unpack into a fresh directory, then put both files where they belong. Replace the example archive name with the file you downloaded:
archive=lookit_0.2.0_darwin_arm64.tar.gz
mkdir lookit-archive
tar xzf "$archive" -C lookit-archive
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin ~/.local/share/man/man1
mv lookit-archive/lookit ~/.local/bin/
mv lookit-archive/man/lookit.1 ~/.local/share/man/man1/Make sure ~/.local/bin is on your PATH; if you add it to your shell configuration, start a new shell before running lookit. This lets your shell find lookit and lets man lookit find the page under ~/.local/share/man.
With Go 1.25 or newer:
go install github.com/jonathandeamer/lookit@latestgo install copies the binary only and does not include the manual. Run man lookit after installing from a Linux package or with the archive commands above. From an unpacked archive or clone, read the page in place with man ./man/lookit.1. lookit(1) is the full reference.
lookit # open the browser and view the catalog
lookit jonathan@tilde.team # open it on one person
lookit @plan.cat # open it on a host, then browse its userslookit --help covers target syntax. Inside lookit, ? shows the keys available on the current screen, including how to filter a list, wrap long prose, and refresh a response.
lookit stores bookmarks in ~/.config/lookit/bookmarks, or in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/lookit/bookmarks when that variable is set. The file is plain text and yours to edit; lookit preserves comments and ordering. It records when you last visited a bookmark and normally puts whatever you haven't checked in a while at the top.
Press b to add or remove the current target. On a user list it acts on the host, so open a person first to bookmark that address.
Put catalog off on its own line to hide the built-in catalog, or sort manual to keep the file's order. lookit rereads the file whenever you return to the startpage, so you can edit it while lookit is running. The file explains its format in a header comment; lookit(1) has the full reference.
lookit reads finger servers and follows finger:// links. It does not host or edit .plan files, run a daemon, or fetch Gopher, Gemini, or web pages. Use fingerd to serve a .plan.
lookit is built with Charm's Bubble Tea, Bubbles, and Lip Gloss. The demo was recorded with VHS.
Bug reports, ideas, and PRs are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md.
MIT © 2026 Jonathan Deamer.