Dill is the terminal-driver vane. You run your urbit in your Unix terminal, and Unix sends every event—such as a keystroke or a change in the dimensions of the terminal window—to be handled by Dill.
A keyboard event's journey from Unix to Dojo, the Urbit shell, can be imagined as diagrammed below:
Keystroke in Unix -> Vere (virtual machine) -> Arvo -> Dill -> the Dojo
Dill is located at /base/sys/vane/dill.hoon within Arvo.
Further Reading
- The Dill tutorial: A technical guide to the Dill vane.