eneskirca/nodeterm

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Why nodeterm

Stacked terminal tabs hide context — you lose track of what's running where. nodeterm turns that into a map: every shell is a node you can place, group, label, and zoom into. Sessions are spatial and persistent, so your mental model stays intact across restarts. And because the app is built around a clean service seam, the same canvas runs three ways — as the desktop app for macOS, Linux and Windows (beta), as a self-hosted browser app you reach from anywhere (Server Edition), and an iOS companion that attaches to the same live sessions.

📚 Full documentation lives at nodeterm.dev/docs — get started, concepts, agents, remote access, troubleshooting.

✨ Features

Everything is a node Right-click the canvas to open a terminal — or an AI agent. Each runs in its own persistent tmux session, next to sticky notes (link one to feed an agent context), Monaco editors, diff views, and web/video nodes — arranged spatially, like a map. Quit the app, even restart the machine — every session comes back.
Know when an agent needs you Hook-driven status — no output scraping: pulsing RUNNING / NEEDS YOU badges, subagent cards with live transcripts, a per-node context meter, and OS notifications. Click the ping, answer the permission prompt right in the node, and get told the moment the turn is done. On a MacBook, agents live in the notch too.
One project, two views Every project is a canvas — and also a kanban board. Cards are your live sessions: drag them across columns while the agent keeps running, open a card into a live card modal (the real session + members, due date, priority, comments), and assign teammates. Toggle with ⌘⇧B. ▶ Watch the board video with sound
Your sessions, anywhere Pair your phone with one QR — scan with the nodeterm iOS app — and the same live session continues in your pocket, E2E encrypted over the relay, not just your LAN. The same canvas also runs self-hosted in any browser (Server Edition).
Talk to your terminal Hold ⌘⌥, say it, let go. On-device Whisper transcribes it locally and types the text into the terminal's prompt — you press Enter (nothing auto-submits). Your voice never leaves the machine.

Node kinds

🖥 Terminal (xterm + tmux, AI naming) · 🤖 Agent (Claude Code / Codex / Antigravity / Gemini / GitHub Copilot / opencode / Grok / Cursor / custom) · 📝 Sticky note (link to an agent as context) · 🗂 Group (bind to a git worktree for agent-per-branch) · ✏️ Editor (Monaco, ⌘S) · 🔀 Diff · 🌐 Web / Video

More

• Session continuity (tmux) — terminals keep running across node remounts and full

app restarts, including live processes; machine reboots restore scrollback and resume agent sessions (claude --resume). The macOS app ships its own tmux, so this works with nothing installed; a tmux already on your system is always used in preference to it, and terminals opened before an upgrade stay as they were until you refresh the node.

• Agent superpowers — context links so agent nodes read each other's transcripts

on demand; Claude-only branch a conversation and managed accounts for several logged-in Claude identities side by side; agents can drive the canvas (open nodes, spawn teams, verify each other's work) via the built-in canvas-control CLI.

• Remote / SSH projects — open a project on a remote host over SSH; terminals, files,

git, and even the board run there while the canvas stays local.

• Source control — VS Code-style stage/unstage, discard, branch switch/create,

commit, push/sync/publish, worktrees, and gh sign-in — backed by system git.

• GitHub Issues on Kanban – opt-in issue cards, exact label-to-column mapping,

All / GitHub / Sessions filtering, and two-way move, close, and reopen sync. See setup and security details.

• AI commit messages & terminal names — bring-your-own local agent CLI run read-only

on the staged diff or captured output.

• Your sessions, in your pocket — nodeterm mobile (iOS) attaches to the same live

tmux sessions: watch an agent work, answer a "needs you", or type into any terminal from your phone — plus push notifications and a mobile board view.

• Power & sleep — while an agent is working, nodeterm keeps the machine from

idle-sleeping, and lets go the moment it finishes (on by default; toggle in the setup tour or Settings → Behavior). It lets the machine sleep anyway on battery below 5% or when the machine runs critically hot. No app can hold a machine awake through a closed lid (a Mac with the lid closed stays awake only while plugged in with an external display) — for overnight runs keep the laptop open and plugged in, or run the agents on a box that doesn't sleep via the Server Edition.

• Command palette (⌘K), file explorer (⌘⇧E), markdown view (⌘M),

undo/redo, and a native macOS dark UI.

• Auto-update & in-app announcements — the app checks a self-hosted feed and

surfaces a "Restart to update" banner and product news.

🌍 Server Edition — nodeterm in your browser

The same canvas runs headless on a Linux (or macOS) host and is used from any browser — so your terminals, editors, source control, board, and agents live on a server you reach from anywhere. Single-user auth (password + secure cookie), a WebSocket bridge, and the exact same renderer as the desktop app.

npm run server:dev     # build + serve; open http://127.0.0.1:8443 and set a password

Terminals, files/editor/diff, the full git panel, the kanban board, and agent-status badges all work in the browser today. See docs/SERVER.md for the quickstart, security model, and current limitations.

🔔 Get push notifications from any SSH host

The same server also runs headless as a background notification host: install it on any Linux box you SSH into, and your phone gets RUNNING / NEEDS YOU push + Live-Activity coverage for the agents running there — with zero open ports (the hook server stays loopback-only and push goes out over HTTPS under a grant your phone drops over SSH).

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eneskirca/nodeterm/main/scripts/install-server.sh | bash

One line installs, builds, and runs it as a systemd service (NODETERM_HEADLESS=1); re-run it to update. See the headless notification host section for details.

📦 Download

Grab the latest build from nodeterm.dev — the download button detects your platform. Everything is also listed at nodeterm.dev/releases:

• macOS — .dmg for Apple Silicon and Intel (auto-updates), or Homebrew:

  brew install --cask nodeterm
  

The cask is in the official homebrew/cask, so no tap is needed. The app updates itself (electron-updater), so brew upgrade is rarely needed for it. If you installed from the old nodeterm/tap, you can drop it with brew untap nodeterm/tap: the short name nodeterm already resolves to the official cask.

• Linux (x64) — self-updating AppImage, a .deb for Debian/Ubuntu

(sudo apt install ./node-terminal_*.deb), or an .rpm for Fedora/RHEL (sudo dnf install ./node-terminal-*.rpm). Updates are manual for both packages: the app tells you when a new version is out and links the download. The AppImage needs FUSE 2, which Fedora does not install by default: sudo dnf install fuse-libs if it exits with a libfuse.so.2 error.

• Windows (x64) — beta — nodeterm-Setup-.exe (per-user installer) or a

portable -win.zip. Early support, so know what you are getting: the installer is unsigned (SmartScreen will ask — More info → Run anyway), updates are manual for now (the app tells you when a new version is out and links the download), and session continuity across restarts is still landing — Windows has no tmux, so the standalone session host that replaces it is being packaged in #579. Everything else — canvas, agents, kanban, hooks — is the same app. Please report what breaks.

• iOS — nodeterm mobile on the

App Store.

Trying it out? Removal is one script — it stops every process nodeterm started, reverts the status-hook/skill entries it merged into your agent CLIs' config (your own hooks and credentials are never touched), and deletes all of nodeterm's own state. Run it with --dry-run first to see the full list of what it found:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eneskirca/nodeterm/main/scripts/uninstall.sh | bash -s -- --dry-run
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eneskirca/nodeterm/main/scripts/uninstall.sh | bash -s -- --yes

The full inventory of what nodeterm writes where (and what the script keeps, like the .nodeterm/ canvas folders inside your own repos) is documented in docs/uninstall.md.

Sponsor

nodeterm is an indie project, built with Claude across several Claude accounts — about $2,000 a month to keep running. There are 10 Founding Sponsor spots at $200/month: your logo goes in this grid and on nodeterm.dev, and your feature requests go first.

1 of 10 spots taken · Become a Founding Sponsor →

Prefer a smaller amount, need an invoice, or want a different arrangement? Write to support@nodeterm.dev — and a ⭐ helps too.

🛠 Build from source

Requires Node.js 20+ on macOS or Linux (tmux recommended — it's what makes sessions survive restarts). A source checkout does not carry the bundled tmux: run node scripts/build-tmux.mjs once on macOS to build it into resources/bin/tmux (the release job does this automatically), or just install tmux yourself. On Windows, run bootstrap-windows.bat from a fresh checkout first — it checks for Node, the Visual Studio C++ build tools and Python 3 (needed to compile node-pty) and points you at the exact winget commands for anything missing, then runs npm ci.

On Fedora (and any distro shipping GCC 14 or newer), export CFLAGS=-D_GNU_SOURCE for the install: smart-whisper's bundled whisper.cpp uses GNU-only CPU-affinity calls without asking for them, and GCC 14 turned that from a warning into an error, so a plain npm install fails while building it. Packaging additionally wants rpm-build (for the .rpm target) and libxcrypt-compat (electron-builder's bundled fpm runs a Ruby that still links libcrypt.so.1, without which both .deb and .rpm fail):

sudo dnf install -y rpm-build libxcrypt-compat
CFLAGS=-D_GNU_SOURCE npm install

npm install        # deps + rebuilds node-pty against Electron's ABI (postinstall)
npm run dev        # dev mode with renderer HMR
npm run build      # production build into out/
npm start          # preview the production build
npm run typecheck  # fastest correctness gate
npm test           # vitest unit + integration suite
npm run dist       # local UNSIGNED .dmg into dist/ (smoke test)
npm run dist:linux # AppImage + .deb + .rpm into dist/ (on a Linux host; .rpm needs rpmbuild)
npm run dist:win   # unsigned NSIS installer + zip into dist/ (on a Windows host)
npm run server:dev # build + run the browser Server Edition (needs Node 22 + tmux)

⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts

These are the defaults — every one of them is remappable in Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.

| Shortcut | Action | | --- | --- | | ⌘K | Command palette | | ⌘T / ⌘⇧C | New terminal / New Claude Code | | ⌘⇧B | Toggle the kanban board | | ⌘W | Close the selected node | | ⌘← ⌘→ ⌘↑ ⌘↓ | Focus the node left / right / above / below (Ctrl+Shift+arrow off macOS) | | ⌘Z / ⌘⇧Z | Undo / Redo | | ⌘M | Toggle markdown view (terminal / editor) | | Hold ⌘⌥ (Ctrl+Alt) | Dictate into the focused terminal | | ⌘⇧E | File explorer | | ⌘, | Settings · ⌘/ Shortcuts | | Right-click | Actions menu (empty space or node) |

Pasting screenshots on macOS: in a terminal, Cmd+V saves the image and pastes its file path. Ctrl+V sends a control key to the foreground program. A local agent with clipboard-image support, such as Claude Code, may attach the image directly at its input prompt; shells and editors give that key other meanings. nodeterm does not detect this capability or retry with the other route. Use Cmd+V for SSH sessions: the image is uploaded and its remote path is pasted. In Server Edition, image paste uploads to the terminal host and depends on browser clipboard access; Ctrl+V does not transfer the browser's clipboard to the host. This distinction also appears in Keyboard shortcuts → Pasting screenshots on macOS and applies to both canvas and kanban terminals.

🏗 Architecture

• Electron, three contexts — src/main (the Electron shell), src/preload (the only

bridge, window.nodeTerminal), src/renderer (React UI). src/shared holds the types and IPC channel names used by all three.

• CorePlatform seam — every service (PTY, workspace/settings, git, agents, hooks) lives

in src/core behind a small platform interface and never imports electron. Electron is one implementation of that seam; the browser Server Edition (src/server) is another, booting the exact same services over a WebSocket-RPC bridge (src/renderer/bridge fills window.nodeTerminal in the browser). One codebase, one renderer, multiple shells.

• TerminalTransport abstraction — the renderer depends only on this interface, never on

IPC or node-pty directly. LocalTransport talks to the local host; RemoteTransport talks to a remote agent over SSH — so remote projects drop in without touching the canvas UI.

• React Flow is the single source of truth for live nodes; projects persist serialized

nodes to disk, and tmux keeps sessions alive across restarts.

• Three surfaces — the desktop app, the browser Server Edition, and the

mobile companion (a separate SwiftUI repo) all ride the same core + transport seams.

See docs/SERVER.md for the Server Edition, and the design docs under docs/ for deeper notes.

🤝 Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Start with CONTRIBUTING.md — setup, the process-boundary rules, and the house rules that come up in review. CLAUDE.md is the deep reference behind them (and is loaded automatically if you work with an AI coding agent). Questions or bug reports are also happy at nodeterm.dev/support / support@nodeterm.dev. nodeterm is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1 — you can use, modify, and redistribute it, including in production, except offering it as a competing product or service or running a copy whose license or usage-limit checks were removed or bypassed (see License).

By submitting a contribution (pull request, patch, or code snippet), you agree that it is licensed under the same BUSL-1.1 terms as the rest of the project, and that the project may continue to relicense future versions (including your contribution) as part of its normal licensing model.

📜 License

BUSL-1.1 (Business Source License): you may copy, modify, redistribute, and — under the Additional Use Grant — make production use of nodeterm, with two exceptions: you may not offer it (hosted, embedded, or as a standalone product/service) in a way that competes with nodeterm or with the Licensor's products built on it, and you may not use in production a copy whose license key, entitlement or usage-limit checks have been removed, disabled or bypassed (changing that code to develop, test or contribute to nodeterm is fine). Each release automatically becomes plain MIT four years after it is published. See LICENSE for the full terms and THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md for the bundled open-source components. For a commercial license beyond the grant, contact eneskirca@gmail.com.

"Claude" and "Claude Code" are trademarks of Anthropic, and "Trello" is a trademark of

Atlassian; nodeterm is not affiliated with or endorsed by either.