My daily work is terminal-centric: running builds, reading logs, hopping into containers, poking through files. I spend more time in the terminal than anywhere else. But the tools around it never felt right. A full IDE treats the terminal as a second-class citizen tucked into a corner — and it's a heavy thing to launch just to run a few commands. A bare terminal emulator, on the other hand, has its own gaps: no way to organize multiple sessions, no file tree, no decent image support, no persistence across restarts. I kept asking: why isn't there something where the **terminal is the main character**? A focused, lightweight workspace built around it — not an IDE with a terminal attached. ## The Problem: The Terminal Deserves Better Than "Good Enough" Modern terminals have been stuck for a long time. The problems I kept running into: - **No organization.** Ten sessions, all jumbled in tabs, no way to see them side by side, no remembering which directory each one was in after a restart. - **No modern protocols.** Images in the terminal felt like a distant dream; the keyboard protocol was frozen in the 1990s; copying rich content or paths across the terminal and other apps was clumsy. - **No context.** You live in the terminal, but your file browser, your notes, and your helpers live somewhere else — context gets lost in the switching. Terry is my attempt to build the workspace I wanted: the terminal at the center, with everything else arranged around it. ## The Evolution: From "It Runs" to "It's Great" Building this was a constant exercise in answering: what should a terminal workspace actually feel like? **Phase 1: Lay the foundation.** I started from the GPUI framework and Zed's workspace/terminal infrastructure, and made the basics solid — sessions you can group, layouts you can tile, state that survives restarts. **Phase 2: Polish the terminal experience.** This was the heart of it: - **Images in the terminal** — kitty graphics and sixel support, so `chafa`, `viu`, or `icat` just work, including animated GIFs. - **Modern protocols** — kitty keyboard protocol (CSI u) and OSC 52 clipboard read/write. - **Link jumping** — `Ctrl+Shift+E` lists every visible link (URLs, file paths, OSC 8) for keyboard-driven navigation. - **Auto-tiling** — kitty-style layouts (manual / tall / grid / stack) for managing multiple sessions. **Phase 3: Bring the file panel and helpers alongside.** A project file tree beside the terminals, so you don't have to leave the terminal view to find files. A sidebar agent and MCP support round out the workflow — useful, but deliberately just one part of the setup rather than the headline. **Phase 4: Cross-platform and engineering.** macOS / Linux / Windows support, Chinese & English localization, and automated releases via GitHub Actions — including cross-compiling the x86_64 macOS build from Apple Silicon, since no Intel Mac was available. ## Why Give It a Try - **Terminal-first**: grouped sessions, kitty-style auto-tiling (manual / tall / grid / stack), session restore - **Images in the terminal**: kitty graphics + sixel, works with `chafa` / `viu` / `icat` - **Modern protocols**: kitty keyboard (CSI u), OSC 52 clipboard, one-key link jumping - **Files beside terminals**: browse the project tree without leaving the terminal view - **Lightweight**: built around terminal + file workflows, not another all-in-one IDE - **Three platforms**: macOS (Intel & Apple Silicon), Linux, Windows If the terminal is where you actually live, Terry might be the workspace you've been looking for.

Terry

terminial,term,shell,ai

terminial,term,shell,ai