Terminal

Every shell tab runs your actual login shell ($SHELL, or /bin/zsh if unset) as a login, interactive shell, so it sources your own profile and rc files and owns its own PATH. Tori adds nothing on top and strips nothing out; a command tab, by contrast, runs one program directly, never a login shell, so nothing in your rc files can swallow it.

Open a terminal

• Terminal in the tab strip’s launch menu (the caret beside +) opens a shell in the selected branch or worktree.
• Open in Integrated Terminal on a folder in the Files tree opens one in that folder.
• Cmd+J focuses the terminal you used last, and Cmd+Opt+J shows or hides the terminals.
• Claude (terminal) in the launch menu opens an agent in its own terminal interface. See Starting a chat.

Cmd+F searches inside the focused terminal; this is separate from Cmd+Shift+F, which searches the whole project. Dropping a sidebar row or a file tree path onto a terminal types its path at the prompt as a mention.

What a tab is

Every tab carries a leading glyph for its kind.

A command tab is what Tori uses for its own jobs: a clone, a bootstrap, an install, a sign-in. Its PATH comes from your login shell, but nothing else your rc files export does. A failed command keeps its output and exit code on screen, a program that is not on PATH shows exit 127 instead of a tab that runs forever, and Ctrl+C shows exit 1.

An agent tab types the agent in only once the shell actually holds the terminal. If something else, tmux for example, still has it after five seconds, nothing is typed and the tab shows a banner naming what took the terminal. The shell stays running under it.

What Tori types, and what it never does

When you send something to a terminal from elsewhere in Tori, a hunk comment, an editor selection, a dragged path, Tori inserts the text at the prompt and stops. It never presses Enter for you. The text goes in as a bracketed paste, cleaned of anything that could end the paste early, so what you see at the prompt is exactly what will run, and only once you run it.

A program in a terminal can set the clipboard, which is how a copy over ssh works. It cannot read the clipboard.

Environment

Every tab’s shell gets TERM_PROGRAM=Tori and TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION. A shell Tori opened also has the tori CLI on its PATH and a token of its own, so tori commands run there know which tab, project and folder they were called from.

Terminals keep rendering smoothly with many tabs open: at most eight hold a GPU context at once, and the one you looked at least recently gives its up first and takes it back when you return.

tmux auto attach

If your shell’s rc file auto attaches tmux, guard that block on [[ "$TERM_PROGRAM" != "Tori" ]], since Tori sets TERM_PROGRAM=Tori. Tori does not work around this for you: doing so would fool any tmux-aware prompt or plugin you actually want to keep working elsewhere.

Git credentials in a terminal

git and ssh prompts for a password route through a native Tori dialog instead of hanging a background git fetch for a TTY that is not there. Separately, Tori can register itself as your git credential helper so a signed-in host account from Settings > Integrations wins over a stale keychain entry, either for what Tori itself runs, or for git anywhere on your machine, depending on what you choose per host.

The dock

The dock is a strip of terminal tabs along the bottom of the window, separate from the panes, for things that are not part of any branch: clones, installs, sign-ins, and shells at your home folder.

• Cmd+Ctrl+J, or the terminal button at the end of the sidebar’s space strip, shows or hides it. While it is hidden, the button counts its tabs.
• The + in the dock’s strip, New shell at your home folder, opens a plain shell.
• Drag the dock’s top edge to resize it. Its height and whether it is open are remembered.

When Tori runs a command for you, a clone from New in space, an agent install, a sign-in, it opens in the dock, in front, while the branch you were on stays selected. The dock hides itself again when its last tab closes, so a clean clone is: dock up, progress, dock gone. A command that fails keeps its tab with exit N and its output, and the toast’s Show brings it back in front.

With nothing in it the dock says Nothing running. Clones, bootstraps, installs and sign-ins show up here. Shells in the dock are not restored after a relaunch.

Restored tabs

Quitting Tori leaves every shell running in Tori’s daemon. Open Tori again and each terminal tab is live where you left it; the first time you look at one, it replays what its shell printed meanwhile, up to the last 2 MB. tori attach shows the same shell in a terminal outside Tori, see Open a terminal tab from any shell.

A shell does not survive the daemon itself restarting, for an update or after a crash: what was running in it ends, and its scrollback goes with it. A shell tab on screen closes then, as it does when its shell exits.