agterm / site

# agterm

> Native macOS terminal on libghostty with a deliberately small interface and a full control API

agterm is a native macOS terminal, built on libghostty (Ghostty's engine), with a deliberately small interface and a full control API. Instead of scattering sessions across tabs, it groups them into named workspaces, and almost everything that structure holds is also an object a script can address: the bundled agtermctl creates and types into sessions, runs overlays, moves windows, sets a session's status glyph, and reads that state back over a local socket. Running many AI coding agents at once is the obvious use, and far from the only one. With nothing scripted it is a fast, modern general-purpose terminal for everyday work.

## Key Features

- Two-level vertical sidebar: workspaces grouping their sessions, with drag-reorder, a flagged working-set view, and single-workspace focus
- Agent-status glyphs on sidebar rows: active, blocked, completed, idle — auto-wired for Claude Code, Codex, Pi, and OpenCode
- agtermctl control CLI over a local unix-domain socket: create, rename, move, and type into sessions, run overlays, move windows, capture output, post notifications tied to a session
- Installable agent skill that teaches Claude Code and Codex the control model and the full agtermctl command set
- Surfaces per session: split panes (two shells), a per-session scratch terminal, and floating/full overlays that run a program or show a local HTML page or a URL; plus one app-wide quick terminal in a floating panel, summonable by a system-wide hotkey
- Remote sessions: attach a live session from another Mac running agterm over ssh, with its status, context, notifications, HUD and the layout of attached panes mirrored to the attaching Mac, and its questions and program overlays drawn there
- Multi-window: a library of windows (e.g. "work" and "personal"), one per screen, restored on next launch
- 512 bundled themes with a live-preview picker, fully rebindable kitty-flavored keymap.conf, event hooks in hooks.conf that run a shell line on status, session, pane and tree events, and full session persistence
- In-terminal search, fuzzy command palettes, and a Ctrl-Tab MRU session switcher

## Docs

- [Documentation](https://agterm.com/docs): full reference — install, keybindings, keymap.conf, hooks.conf, ghostty config, themes, control API
- [Control API commands](https://agterm.com/commands): the complete agtermctl command catalog
- [README](https://github.com/umputun/agterm/blob/master/README.md): the project synopsis, with install, the model, and the control-API demo
- [Architecture](https://github.com/umputun/agterm/blob/master/ARCHITECTURE.md): module split, surface ownership, and the libghostty C boundary

## Install

- [Releases](https://github.com/umputun/agterm/releases): signed and notarized DMG downloads (Apple Silicon, macOS 14+)
- [Homebrew cask](https://github.com/umputun/homebrew-apps): `brew install --cask umputun/apps/agterm`

## Optional

- [Home page](https://agterm.com): feature overview and screenshots
- [Source](https://github.com/umputun/agterm): MIT licensed, embeds libghostty from Ghostty (MIT)
- [Issues](https://github.com/umputun/agterm/issues): bug reports
- [Discussions](https://github.com/umputun/agterm/discussions): questions and feature requests