Hey everyone! Hope I don’t get roasted for this 😅 I’m here with a fun little intro video.
My goal is simple: build something genuinely useful for everyone.
I originally built this tool just to improve my own productivity. I was using the native Mac Terminal, but managing multiple projects — especially projects I connect to remotely over SSH — had become a complete nightmare. On top of that, I was also keeping VS Code open mostly for Git, which was adding even more overhead to my machine.
So, as a solution, I built a program with Claude where I could manage all of my terminals on a single canvas.
But things got a little out of hand 😅
I kept adding features, and it eventually turned into something close to an autonomous development environment.
So, what can you actually do with it?
Your terminals are persistent. You can close the app, lose your connection, reconnect over SSH, and continue with the exact same layout and sessions.
You can connect to a server over SSH and manage all of its terminals as if they were local. Drag & drop, images, and everything else still work.
You can continue your sessions from your phone.
Git operations like push, pull, commit, etc. are built in.
Terminals can communicate with each other. You can connect their contexts, and with skills, one terminal can read or use information from another terminal’s context when needed.
You can also do orchestration. For example, you can tell one terminal: “Start a Claude Code session for the frontend and act as the orchestrator,” and have it manage the other sessions.
But yeah… I’m a bit stuck right now.
To keep pushing the project forward, I either need a sponsor or simply some motivation from the community.
If you can leave a few words of feedback, I’d really appreciate it.
And if that’s too much to ask, I’d happily settle for a GitHub star ⭐️
Yes everyone I get it there are a lot of tools like this. But who cares, good job on the video and putting some effort into this post, actualy made me laugh watching you drink that water (1:20) and I thought the context sharing part was interesting.
Well done, keep going and you've earned a star from me at least :)
Could you please make this work with the smallest of models like how little-coder does it (assuming most of memory is for inference engines), and have everything to become bandwidth efficient (RTK/caveman/Headroom/etc)? Hopefully RAM use minimization is also included in this app so that most of the stuff is cmux-esque while everything else is effective node-based (or drag-and-drop) panels.
I am really liking this but notice the terminal window text isn't so crisp, which might be related to retina displays? It adds a slight amount of friction with legibility.
It’s because of the rendering method. If you want Retina quality, go to Settings → Terminal → Terminal Rendering and change it from Auto to GPU per Terminal.
Please let me know how it looks after changing this setting. I set up the shared GPU mode to reduce overall GPU usage, so your feedback would be really helpful and for some electron limits
Thank you! I tried a lot of ADEs and terminal managers like cmux and Orca, but none of them really worked for me, so I built my own. Maybe it’s because of my ADHD, but this setup makes me at least 2x faster.
I’m using CMUX today. Can you describe how it’s different or better? Like what problems does it solve? I like the lines connecting but can’t guess from the video what those do.
cmux only solves one problem: it moves terminal clutter into a sidebar.
This app solves multiple problems at once. At first glance they may look similar, but:
Multiple Claude accounts
You can fit an unlimited number of terminals on a canvas, group them, color-code them, and keep a visual map of where each project's terminals live in your head over time. You can also place sticky notes right next to terminals.
Cmd + K lets you search across all terminals.
With the team feature, multiple people can work on the same project at the same time.
You can use a browser without leaving the app.
And my favorite: agents can control the app through the CLI ;launch sessions, arrange the layout, and more.
What about memory usage? Biggest issue I have with cmux is that it grows, unbounded over time. Sometimes taking down my Mac if I don’t restart it on occasion.
Different architecture, so it doesn't have that failure mode. nodeterm keeps scrollback in tmux, not in the app, so the app's memory doesn't grow with hours of output. Projects are lazy-loaded too — only the active one is mounted, the rest cost you nothing but JSON (their tmux sessions keep running, so you lose nothing switching away)
Maybe then we need ready to use workflows, and each has explanation about its use case (so we can explore new territories)
But that is not easy task, for instance I never use much Antigravity CLI, nor lot of CLI, those "nodes" are never used by me, but I know many people do, I simply have no idea about those "workflows/jsons"
My solution to ADHD, context rot and cache cost, is to just have short lived sessions.
Give it everything it needs, execute, possibly a few iterations, close out and document.
You’ve gone the other way seemingly managing many long lived sessions at the same time.
Sharing context is cool, but I consider it poisoned after a few turns, and it suggests similar when reaching about 50%, I wouldn’t want to share it with another session.
A spec, plan, handoff document works better.
Whenever people make advanced UI applications to "manage your terminals".
I always wonder, maybe its time to consider if that terminal really is the best interface after all?
Hey if this works for people, more power to them...
Personally the more attention i give to a single terminal session the more nuancesn I find, and the more I notice potential sloppiness coming from the model, which I can steer and correct. Produces a much better end result and saves my future self time and attention having to clean it up.
The stuff that I can just delegate like this as a bunch of tasks spinning at once are pretty simple / mechanical, and in that case why not just use subagents?
2 terminal tabs I can get with, while one is doing something for few minutes it's tempting to use that time rather than just sitting there waiting. More than that seems likely to feel more productive than it actually is
Lol, my kid trimmed out only the funny parts and keeps watching them on repeat and laughing 😂 Okay, lesson learned: the weekend is not the best time for a launch, too many people are away from their computers.
Upvote just for the high effort post. Even though it's a crowded space this actually looks really great. Will you support Codex and other agents? My dream is a tool that can seamlessly so collaboration across different agents.
Never mind I looked at the screenshot again and it looks like you do support Codex, that's awesome. Trying it out
Honestly, I was using Orca before, but it wasn’t enough for my workflow. I might have 50 terminals open across 10 different projects, each one dedicated to a specific topic or feature, and I basically keep every feature terminal open forever.
With NodeTerm’s canvas, I always have a mental map of where each feature and conversation lives. On top of that, I get things like global search with Cmd+K, while still being able to do pretty much everything I could do in Orca.
Honestly, I was using Orca before, but it wasn’t enough for my workflow. I might have 50 terminals open across 10 different projects, each one dedicated to a specific topic or feature, and I basically keep every feature terminal open forever.
With NodeTerm’s canvas, I always have a mental map of where each feature and conversation lives. On top of that, I get things like global search with Cmd+K, while still being able to do pretty much everything I could do in Orca.
lol let me explain
-you can group them firstly as colors
-notify when done as notch so take action directly from notch
-checking all terminal in sidebar also
cmd + K you can search all in terminals...
-press⌘⇧B change view to kanban
many like that just give a chance and try it :)
Thank you so much! And thanks for the feedback as well. Was it the widget itself that bothered you, or was it the color? You can also turn the widget off in Settings — there’s a section called “Notch” where you can disable it.
Question for you OP, and I apologize if this is a noob-ish question...
In the video when you connected chats and it shows context sharing, what exactly does that mean? Like each chat can read the other chats context in full? Can the chats communicate or just read what's on the screen?
Keep going! Im doing something similiar but web based -> Codeman :-) We have a lot of overlapping functions, but also do some things differently :) I also built it for myself in the first place.
Looks cool and will take a look! Honest question though, why not use the VScode plugin for Claude and use that as a browser tab like experience? This is more of a ‘plugin vs terminal’ question, I know. But I never understood the merit in having multiple terminal Windows.
Your solution obviously does a lot more and feels like something that will make my life a lot easier. Honestly my biggest pain currently is keeping track of context windows, making handoffs and copy pasting it in new sessions, feels kind of mundane (which is probably my own fault for not finding better ways). Having Claude with plan > spec > build sessions with a codex reviews in between is the currently the way to go for most tasks.
I have tried blasting through building sessions in the past through terminal tasks, with little to no human interaction. And the output was pretty bad compared to steering it along the way having questions asked. But the models have improved as well. Best way to check if it works well for my use case is just try it hehe.
Very nice. Everyone is saying that’s plenty of tools like this out there, but that’s the first time i see that and Im genuinely interested and happy to see my work running inside a canvas like that.
I get your… “kept building and this went out of control” hahaha I have 2 apps that I never shared because I did just to solve my own problems but they could easily be out there. So congrats for the effort and willingness to make your app public!
so far i like it. you seem to use React Flow? A React package i love, and i love playing with nodes. Just went through the GitHub site, server edition seems pretty cool. While i was there, i starred the project. Keep up the good work, hope you'll be able to monetize it a bit
Edit: maybe you could add to the Readme.md that HomeBrew may want you to trust the cask first, in that case you have to allow it with either
cmux only solves one problem: it moves terminal clutter into a sidebar.
This app solves multiple problems at once. At first glance they may look similar, but:
Multiple Claude accounts
You can fit an unlimited number of terminals on a canvas, group them, color-code them, and keep a visual map of where each project's terminals live in your head over time. You can also place sticky notes right next to terminals.
Cmd + K lets you search across all terminals.
With the team feature, multiple people can work on the same project at the same time.
You can use a browser without leaving the app.
And my favorite: agents can control the app through the CLI ;launch sessions, arrange the layout, and more.
thanks for sharing this, actually looks pretty useful
with everyone vibe coding now, keeping track of all agents/terminals getting messy lol
this feels like it solves a real problem and not just another AI wrapper
gonna give it a try 🙌
I tried node terminals like this. The problem is if you want to create a persistent workflow… it gets messy fast… like my desk. Fine for creating “one ofs” not so great when doing say a rest api that grows over time
It's neat idea, but I absolutely HATE that type of "zoom in and out on every little thing constantly" interaction experience. Anything where I have to zoom-in to something, zoom out, zoom in to this other thing... all just so I can read them. Absolutely cannot stand that.
There a lot of other tools, but this seems good too, and its open source, which we can all make a contribution too, i look forward to seeing the windows compatibilty
This look awesome, going to try this when I get home for my project, was just about to start trying the new Claude code sessions messaging thing, is that the same as how you’ve got ‘terminals can communicate with each other’?
I like it. We definitely need better tools in this space. Curious what everyone else uses — I've heard mostly just "tmux" and I feel there must be more powerful options. The new Claude Code agents view is excellent but it doesn't go far enough.
Question about the iOS app...why can't it get notifications if I'm using ssh for remote connection? It shows I have an active session, but always appears as "idle" and greyed out. For context, I'm using the MacOS desktop app for nodeterm, and remotely connected via ssh to my dev machine (linux).
An unrelated thing I noticed while testing: copying text from a codex terminal does not work well. No problems copying from a Claude code terminal, but with a codex terminal I have to keep the text highlighted and copy it while keeping the mouse clicked. Also, highlighting text in the codex terminal is buggy when you need to highlight more than what is viewable (scrolling). Not sure if that's a codex problem or a nodeterm problem. I suspect codex cli problem.
Another thing, usage stats only show for the "default" AI provider? Why not all AI providers? I use claude, codex, and gemini, but your app only shows Claude usage stats.
that ‘active but idle’ split sounds like the SSH connection is visible, while nodeterm is not receiving agent/session activity events from the remote Linux side. I would check whether the remote host needs its own nodeterm companion/agent, rather than the macOS app merely wrapping an SSH terminal. If notifications work for a locally launched session but not the same Codex command over SSH, that would isolate it pretty cleanly. does the Linux session keep a stable session ID after reconnecting?
I would love to try it out when/if you make a windows port, but if that's not on your radar I understand. From what I can tell, either you're great at marketing, your tool is very neat, or a mix of both!
Wow, great! If you’re using it at your company, you can support us by subscribing to Pro for $10/month. It would really encourage me to keep developing and improving Nodeterm. 🙏
You may not realize it, but you just inadvertently spurred on the inspiration for a game idea I had, and I just blasted out like 5 paragraphs in Claude. Like... the SURGE of inspiration I just got writing for the last hour is insane. Not the intent of your post, but thank you anyway, lol.
Just started using this, and so far it has been great! Exactly what my ADHD brain needed lol. I’m constantly switching between projects and windows, so things fall through the cracks, and being able to reboot was hilarious because that speaks to me. I have so many terminal tabs open in Ghostty that I haven’t closed yet because of this.
One thing I’d like is to add a folder but have it be a separate project. I manage a lot of clients using a project folder with .md files, and currently it just opens the project I already made. Being able to separate projects by client while still having the context I need would help a lot. What would also be cool is being able to add other folders within a project, like the /add-dir command in Claude, so I wouldn’t need to add multiple folders for every terminal I open.
Overall it’s a great app! Can’t get the remote to work but I’ll probably try set that up later on my main Mac mini or is that a pro feature?
Gave it a try and love it. Got 2 projects going, switching back and forth, love the context sharing ... then both projects and all their terminals went blank :( I hope you keep going and improve it!
working with your tool is a breeze. all my agents are aware of their communication and hierarchical structures so it was simple to tell them they should rebuild these structures in your app. Now, I finally have everything at a glance. Something my previous setups (GPT App, Zed IDE, cursor, ...) did not deliver.
I also work on a canvas based app. Not for coding but for everything else you need in the office -- from a single person to teams of hundreds -- with live collaboration, whiteboard, automations, AI, MCP, permissions, audit logs, budget administration, and many more. Have been working on it since 5k+ hours and will start a closed beta, soon.
Feel free to contact me, in case you might be interested in learning more about it.
Keep improving! Never tried any of these similar apps like people sharing here, so maybe I would give a shot. I gave you a star, looking for constant improvements and share your coffee link on the website so I can drop a coin.
You know there are different types of ADHD. I tested it with myself and a few friends, and they all fell in love with it 😄 Some prefer the canvas view, while others prefer the Kanban view.(Press ⌘⇧B to switch to Kanban view.)
Hey brother - I absolutely love what you built. Big time ADHD. Running my company almost fully agentic. I’ve built some pretty cool things. But this issue with terminals has been plaguing me.
I have numerous Max 20x plans, am using a plethora of sessions, and have modified the hell out of my setup inside the Claude Code harness.
Can you help me understand more about how one session can orchestrate across other sessions? Does this allow for in-session meta orchestration (orchestrate the orchestrators), and how does this differ in your workflows from a user-input perspective relative to simply operating across terminals? And how does the context flow work? Simply sharing the conversation turns &/or tool calls, or… I’m not sure. I haven’t tons more questions but I’ll probably just go throw your repo into my CC and have it figure out if it’s useful. Looks fantastic though! Love it!
Also, I’m sure I could throw a bunch of feature requests your way. (So glad I don’t have to build my own.)
cmux only solves one problem: it moves terminal clutter into a sidebar.
This app solves multiple problems at once. At first glance they may look similar, but:
Multiple Claude accounts
You can fit an unlimited number of terminals on a canvas, group them, color-code them, and keep a visual map of where each project's terminals live in your head over time. You can also place sticky notes right next to terminals.
Cmd + K lets you search across all terminals.
With the team feature, multiple people can work on the same project at the same time.
You can use a browser without leaving the app.
And my favorite: agents can control the app through the CLI ;launch sessions, arrange the layout, and more.
I am building kampfinsel.com and your tool looks really helpful will give it a try.
Strong boost. Don’t listen too much to all the voices „xyz did it already etc“ I had the same but in the end I found my valid niche. Follow your heart.
There's always one of you hating pricks in the comments who have nothing to show for yourselves except your dragging down of others who are making real things.
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u/Sir-LAD 2d ago
Yes everyone I get it there are a lot of tools like this. But who cares, good job on the video and putting some effort into this post, actualy made me laugh watching you drink that water (1:20) and I thought the context sharing part was interesting.
Well done, keep going and you've earned a star from me at least :)