Mosh showed us that mobile-friendly remote terminals are possible, but its architecture limits what it can do. RoSE takes the same core ideas — local keystroke prediction, UDP-like unreliable transport, roaming support — and rebuilds them on modern foundations:
- QUIC (RFC 9000) + Datagrams (RFC 9221): Instead of a custom encrypted UDP protocol, RoSE uses QUIC. This gives us TLS 1.3 encryption for free, multiplexed reliable streams alongside unreliable datagrams, and standard X.509 certificate-based authentication. It also means RoSE servers can sit behind ordinary reverse proxies with SNI routing.
- wezterm terminal emulator: Instead of a custom terminal emulator, RoSE embeds wezterm's terminal emulation. This gives us full support for modern terminal features (true color, sixel, kitty graphics, etc.) without reinventing the wheel.
- Scrollback support: Unlike Mosh, RoSE supports scrollback history, synchronized (at lower priority) over a dedicated QUIC stream.
- Session persistence: Detach and reattach to sessions seamlessly. Unlike mosh, connections are stateful at the transport layer, but new transports (for roaming) only require 1 RTT to reconnect.
- Extensible: QUIC's multiplexed streams make it straightforward to add features like file transfer, port forwarding, and other capabilities that currently require a separate SSH connection.