How do I install Next Term?

Copy the stdio config for Cursor, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or VS Code on this page. It uses the publisher's install, not a PlugMCP proxy.

Does Next Term need an API key?

No required environment variable is listed on this record.

What transport does Next Term use?

Next Term runs locally over stdio.

When was Next Term last checked?

Last checked 2026-10-28. A native macOS terminal for the AI era: tabs that show which agents are working, done or waiting for you, plus an IDE-style project sidebar.

Next Term MCP server

Next Term

The missing IDE for the terminal.

A native macOS terminal and editor for the AI era. Run Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Command Code, Junie, a test suite and a dev server side by side, one per tab, and see at a glance which agents are working, which are done, and which are waiting on your decision.

Download for macOS · website and documentation: nxtrm.mishuk.me

Agent status, in step with the agent. A spinner shows while an agent is working, read from the agent's own screen ("esc to interrupt") for Claude Code, Codex, Command Code and Gemini CLI, and from OpenCode's own footer ("esc interrupt") for OpenCode, so it stops the moment they stop; other agents go by output timing. A green check means done and waiting for your next prompt, an amber "!" means it is asking you something. Plain commands show no spinner and end with a check or a red cross. Marks clear when you look at the tab.
Decisions come to you. When an agent asks for permission ("Do you want to make this edit…?"), a notification says so with the question; click it to land on that tab. OpenCode's "Permission required" prompt and its questions count too, and the notification quotes the request, such as "Permission required: Shell command ($ npm test)". Works however you start the agent: directly, through an alias or a shell function, npx or bunx, or cd app && claude.
Code editor. Click a file once in the sidebar (Settings › Editor › Open files and folders with a single click, on for new installs; off, double-click), pick a Find in Files result, or ⌘-click src/app.ts:42:7 in any output: the file opens above the terminal at that line, coloured by 112 TextMate grammars, the kind VS Code uses: PHP and Blade (Laravel, WordPress), Ruby and ERB (Rails), Python and Jinja (Django, Flask), JS/TS/TSX (React, Next.js), Vue, Svelte, Astro, Angular, Liquid, Twig, Go and templ, Rust, Elixir, YAML, SQL and more. Line numbers, adjustable line height, soft wrap, auto-indent, ⌘/ to comment, ⌘L to go to a line, find, undo. Files keep their encoding, line endings and permissions. When an agent changes a file you have open, the editor follows; if you have unsaved edits it asks first. Markdown files open in Live Preview, styled where you type, with the syntax showing only on the lines you are on: a click ticks a box, ⌘-click follows a link, Return continues a list, Edit › Markdown formats in the markers the file already uses, Go to Heading jumps through it with a word count, and the file's bytes never change unless you type (⇧⌘V shows its source).
Jupyter notebooks, read-only. A .ipynb opens as cells: Markdown laid out, code coloured in the kernel's language, and the outputs saved in the file (text, tables as text, images and errors). Nothing runs (there is no kernel); Open as JSON shows the file itself.
Large data files. A JSON Lines, CSV or TSV file over 2 MB opens in a read-only head view: its first 1,000 rows as a table, as fast for a 2 GB file as for a small one, with Load More, search and Copy As; click a cell for its whole value (a JSON object indented, as written). Logs and other text files over 32 MB open there too.
⌘V pastes an image into your agent. With a screenshot or another image alone on the clipboard, ⌘V in a tab running Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Qwen Code, OpenCode, Cursor Agent or Command Code sends that agent ⌃V, its own key for an image, and it reads the image from the clipboard itself. At a shell, in Copilot CLI or any other program on this Mac, the image is kept as a PNG in a new folder only you can read, for a day, and its quoted path is pasted; in a tab logged in to another machine by hand (ssh) nothing is pasted. A file copied in Finder pastes as its full path, as dropping it does (its name in a tab on a server or logged in elsewhere: a paste never copies a file there). Text on the clipboard always pastes as text. A pasted image is removed a day later, at the next paste or launch.
Send to Agent (⌥⌘K). Select code in the editor or a diff, or files and folders in the sidebar, and send them to the agent in your tab: Next Term types the reference in that agent’s own syntax (@app/User.php#L10-20 for Claude, @app/User.php#10-20 for OpenCode, app/User.php:10-20 for Codex and others) and hands you the prompt to add your instruction. It never presses Enter for you.
Tasks for tomorrow's agent. Tasks › Add Task… (⌃⌘T) turns a prompt into a task, filled from what you selected: the first line is what to do, list lines its steps, the rest notes, planned for tomorrow unless you pick another day. Each task is one Markdown file in the project's todo/ folder (the main checkout's, in a worktree), with - [ ] boxes and where you were (branch, tab, agent and the command that resumes its session), so an agent there tomorrow reads it with its own tools. Agents add tasks too, with the MCP tool add_task, which asks you on the Mac first and shows the exact file. Stored keys show as •••, Undo takes a task back, and Settings › Tasks chooses another folder. Tasks go where each project says (Settings › Tasks or Tasks › Send Tasks To): the todo folder, Reminders, Things, a Shortcut, Todoist or OmniFocus Quick Add, a prefilled GitHub, GitLab, Linear, Trello or Azure Boards page, or typed to your agent for its tracker. Next Term makes no request for any of this: an app gets the task on this Mac, a page opens in your browser for you to submit, and an agent's request is typed for you to send. Tasks › Connect a Tracker to Your Agents… types each agent's own line to add a tracker's MCP server into a new tab, and never runs it. Tasks › Wrap Up… (⌃⌘W) asks your idle agent tabs for a handoff in docs/handoffs/ and turns their next steps into tomorrow's tasks after you review them; Tasks › Post Update… drafts Done, Next and Blocked from today's handoffs, tasks and commits for you to copy, save or hand to an agent. Next Term sends neither anywhere. See the todo file format, where tasks go and Wrap Up and Post Update.
Agents see your editor. Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Qwen Code, GitHub Copilot CLI and OpenCode in a Next Term tab connect to Next Term as their IDE, the way they connect to VS Code: the lines you select go with your next prompt (“⧉ 10 lines selected”), and ⌥⌘K puts @file#L10-20 into Claude’s prompt (@file:10-20 into Copilot’s, and the same lines into OpenCode’s, counted from 1 as OpenCode counts them). When Claude, Gemini, Qwen or Copilot wants to edit a file, its change opens as a diff to Accept (⌘↩) or Reject, as in VS Code; answering in the terminal works too. OpenCode’s link shares your selection only: its edits don’t open as diffs, and it links from a local tab, not from tmux or a remote tab. Nothing to set up: Next Term turns Gemini’s and Qwen’s IDE mode on for you. Local only, with a fresh secret per launch; .env files are never shared; Settings turns it off.
Orchestrate agents across projects (MCP). Next Term is an MCP server for any agent: Claude Code and the Claude desktop app, Codex and the ChatGPT desktop app, Gemini CLI, Qwen Code, Cursor, OpenCode, Copilot CLI, Amp, Junie and Command Code. One agent can run the others. It sees every project and tab with each agent's state (working, done, waiting for a decision and the question), opens projects, starts an agent in a new tab, gives it a prompt, waits until it stops, reads its screen, answers its questions (only the question it saw, never a newer one), reads the projects' files, searches them and sees their git status and diffs (secrets files refused, secret-looking values masked), and uses the editor (the selection, open files, opening a file at a line). It answers OpenCode too: Allow once, Allow always or Reject, and a question’s option by its number. It presses Return on an OpenCode button only once OpenCode’s screen shows that button selected, so in a theme that doesn’t show it, only Reject can be answered. Next Term adds itself to the agents it finds, with nothing to run; Settings turns it off and removes it again (from the Claude desktop app once Claude is closed). The tools are marked honestly, so agents ask you before they type into a tab, and the ones that change files, git, settings or your tasks (add_task) wait for your Approve on the Mac. At a zsh prompt, reading a tab also gives the line being typed and the cursor, and any suggestion a zsh plugin draws, which is left out of the screen once Next Term finds it where zsh drew it, so it isn't read as typed. Local only: a private socket, no network port. Each of herdr's agents has an id of its own in list_tabs, which the tab tools take as they take a tab's: an agent reads another's pane, prompts it, presses its keys or answers its question through herdr, even when another pane has herdr's keyboard, and only that agent counts as driven. Text sent to one is herdr's argument on the server while it runs, so text holding a stored key is refused.
Secrets. API and MCP keys sealed on your Mac, used by agents by name after you approve with Touch ID or your password. Secrets › Import From copies keys in from .env, JSON, TOML, YAML and CSV files and password-manager exports, moves them out of your MCP configs, or takes them from your own 1Password, Bitwarden or Bitwarden Secrets Manager CLI in a tab you can see; it brings in only the rows you tick, with Undo. Rotate… opens a key’s page from its link and takes the new key in the same sheet; it keeps the old key masked for 30 days and can remind you when a key gets old (Secrets › Keys Due to Rotate). Each key asks for Touch ID every time it’s used until you untick that, and a key set to “Never show this key” is never shown or copied, even to you. See Secrets.
Pick up any agent's conversation. The Welcome window lists your projects; choose one and every conversation Claude Code, Codex, Command Code, Gemini CLI, Qwen Code, OpenCode, Cursor Agent and Copilot CLI kept for it is there, newest first, with its title, branch and model, including the ones started in its subfolders. Resume runs it again in a new tab, in the folder it was started in; Fork continues a copy; a session open in a tab offers Go to Tab instead; type to search them by title, agent, branch or model. In a project window, ⌥⌘O does the same, and the sidebar's Agent Sessions group shows the newest five, marks the running ones and continues an agent's latest session. Only titles and dates are read (never whole transcripts), secrets are scrubbed from titles, and nothing is written.
Suggestions while typing. At a zsh prompt, the rest of the newest command of yours that starts with what you typed shows dimmed after the cursor: → (or End, ⌃E, ⌃F) takes it, ⌥→ one word, Esc hides it, and Return runs only what you typed. It is drawn over the terminal, never into it, so copy, Find, the scrollback and an agent reading the tab never take it for typed text, and before it shows it is checked: a cd to a folder that is gone, a missing file or program, or a command that never ran well is not suggested. It comes from Next Term's own record of the commands you ran in its zsh tabs, on this Mac: never an agent's, never a line with a secret, and nothing while View › Private Mode is on; until that record has your commands, zsh's own history in the shell fills in. Right after a command, the empty prompt shows the one that usually follows it, when that is clear. Where zsh-autosuggestions (or Atuin through it) shows its own, Next Term shows none and asks once which you want, without touching your .zshrc. View › Suggestions While Typing turns it off or on, and Settings › Terminal › While typing does too, says how many commands are kept and clears them.
Remote tabs on your servers. File › New Remote Tab… (⌥⌘T) opens a tab on your VPS over your own ssh and ~/.ssh/config. With tmux or herdr on the server, agents keep working while the Mac sleeps or is off, and the tab reattaches when it reconnects. Host keys are never accepted silently, nothing is installed on the server except the Tab hook you allow, and no password is stored. Agents get seven MCP tools to open tabs there and read the changes. To find herdr, a herdr tab uses the copy your running herdr server runs, or may run your login shell on the server once (no terminal, 3 seconds at most) to read its PATH; when herdr isn't there, the tab says where it looked and links herdr's install page. A file or folder dropped on a remote tab, or an image pasted into one, is copied to the server first, into a new folder only you can read there, and its path there is what gets pasted.
herdr's agents, one by one. A herdr tab follows each of herdr's agents, with herdr's own state, name and title: a row each under the tab in the tab list, with how long it has waited and, with Show Folders, the question it asks; past six agents the idle ones fold into one row. Click a row and herdr shows that agent's pane; ⌥-click peeks. Window › Go to Agent… (⌃⌘A) lists every agent in every window, herdr's and your agent tabs alike, what needs you first, oldest first. Agents › Go to Next Agent Needing You (⇧⌘U) counts each of herdr's agents as it counts a tab, so it goes straight to that agent's pane, and the Dock menu lists its window. Each agent gets its own notice, one however many tabs show its session, with the question read from its own pane once herdr has read it blocked twice in a row, its choices as buttons and Reply on a finished one, each checked against the screen first; a notice goes away once the agent no longer needs you. An agent of a connected herdr server with no herdr tab gets herdr's own words and no buttons: a click opens a herdr tab there, on its pane. Mute Notices and Keep as Unread are on a row's menu, and the Dock badge counts the agents waiting on you once, however many tabs show them. Peek reads an agent, answers its question or sends it a line (kept as a draft) without moving herdr's view; ⌘E there shows why herdr gives its state, and ⌘2 its conversation, from the transcript herdr names (Claude Code and Codex). A tab can open one of herdr's named sessions, picked in New Remote Tab; a connected herdr server with no herdr tab still shows its agents in Go to Agent, and a saved herdr server is one choice away. herdr run in a tab on this Mac gets the same, the machines saved in it included, read through that herdr; that tab is only read, never kept or reopened. Keep herdr's ui.toast.delivery at its default when Next Term follows herdr on this Mac, or herdr posts its own notices too. Next Term tells programs that ask (herdr, vim, tmux) when its window or the app loses the focus, so herdr keeps a finish you have not seen. It runs only herdr's own commands (its agent list, read, prompt, keys, focus and explain, its sessions and its list of machines): it never installs, starts, stops or updates herdr, never changes its machines, and never ends one of its agents.
nxtrm, like code. nxtrm . opens the folder as a project, nxtrm app/User.php:42 a file at a line. It works in every Next Term tab from the first launch, and in other terminals too: the first launch links it into a folder on your PATH that needs no password (~/.local/bin, /opt/homebrew/bin), or, when there is none, offers to put it in /usr/local/bin with your password. It never changes PATH or touches anyone else's nxtrm.
Your layout. The terminal below the editor (default), beside it on the right or left, or above it; the project sidebar on the left or right; the terminal's tabs on top or in a list down its left or right, with split panes as rows under each tab (View › Terminal Tabs). From the ⋯ buttons, the View menu or Settings › Terminal. ⌘J folds the terminal away so the editor gets the room, and brings it back at its size.
Projects. ⌘O brings up the Welcome window with the keyboard in its search: type a few letters, and Return goes to the window of an open project, opens a closed one, or goes to a saved server's window, connecting when none is open. Open projects come first, each marked with a filled dot and counted (a closed one has a ring), then the ones you used last, including those an agent, a worktree window or a restore opened. Every open window has a row: a project's other windows under it, and New Terminal's and a server's windows too, each with its agents' marks as the tab bar shows them, a lost connection's server mark among them. ⌘1–⌘9 jump to the first nine rows, and ⌘Return opens a project, or connects to a server, in a new window. The list keeps your last 50 projects; Open Recent shows 10. ⌘O again there (or Open…) opens any folder as a project. Its window keeps the project in the sidebar, and new tabs open in it by default. Window titles start with the project ("shop ▸ fix-login — claude"; "~/Downloads — vim" with no project), so the Window menu and Mission Control tell windows apart. Next Term resumes where you left off by default (the first launch shows the Welcome window), or opens to the Welcome window or a new terminal, as you choose. Open Recent and Close Project too.
Project colours. Each project's window has a colour of its own, a soft glow along its top row, strongest behind the window's buttons and gone 320 points in, so two windows side by side are told apart at a glance. It is picked the first time a project opens (the colour the open windows use least) and then kept. A worktree's window has its repository's colour, and the Welcome window's dots show it. Right-click the top row, or View › Project Color, for nine named colours, Automatic or None for This Project; Show Project Colors there, or in Settings › General, turns them all off. Nothing is written into the project.
The window column. With two or more windows open, every window shows a thin column at its outer edge, on the project sidebar's side (the far left, or the far right with the sidebar on the right): a badge for each open window in the order they opened, in its project's colour with two letters of its name, a worktree's under its repository's, and a dot when an agent there needs you, failed or finished. The count of windows is at its top, and your own window's badge sits in a darker well, as the tab you are in does. It stays quiet on purpose: only a decision or a failure stands out. A click on a badge brings that window forward as it was. ⌃⌘S, or the chevron, unfolds it in every window to show each window's name and marks, as ⌘O does; a window too narrow for it folds it, then hides it, until it is wider. When it appears, the editor and terminal give it the room and the sidebar keeps its width. View › Hide Window Column (⌃⇧⌘S), or Settings › General, turns it off, and the same key brings it back. With it off and at least two more windows open than when you hid it (five at least), Next Term offers it once, two weeks on at the soonest; with it on and five windows open, it says once how to hide it. An agent can show, hide, fold or unfold it with set_layout, once you approve on the Mac.
A new terminal stays out of your files. New Terminal (⌘N) opens a shell where new tabs open (Settings › Terminal › New tabs: your home folder unless you chose a folder). With no project, its sidebar says "No project open" and lists your recent projects, Open Folder…, Connect to Server… and Browse Home Folder, and no files; cd into a project and its tree appears, with Open as Project Window. Browse Home Folder shows your home folder's files in that window, each folder read only when you open it. While you browse it, a bar over the tree shows where you are; Back, or ⌘↑ from the home folder, returns to No project open. Start an agent in your home folder and Next Term offers once to open a project for it instead (Don't Ask Again turns that off); the agent runs either way.
Project sidebar with git. The project as a live file tree: changed files and folders coloured, with +12 −3 line counts like a pull request, and the branch and total changes at the top, with a Pull 152 button when the upstream has commits you don't (Next Term fetches every 10 minutes, so it appears without a click). Files your agents create or change show up on their own.
Databases. A Databases group in the sidebar lists the databases a project's own files name (Laravel and Herd DB_* keys, DATABASE_URL, Prisma, Drizzle, Supabase, Vercel-linked projects, SQLite files), found by reading them, without running project code; local or remote by host, passwords masked. SQLite files open in a viewer that stays read-only until you allow editing in its tab; click a cell for its whole value, up to 4 MB (text wrapped, JSON indented, a blob's size and first bytes in hex, the row beside it). Other connections open in TablePlus when it is installed (libSQL aside), and local and development ones (Docker, OrbStack) in mysql or psql in a new tab. Each provider badge (Neon, Supabase, Vercel, Herd and others) opens that provider's page in the browser.
Services. Below Databases, a Services group lists what else a project's files name: AI model providers, vector stores, tracing and evals, agent frameworks, local dev servers, backends and hosting. Each row's badge opens its page: a local server on the port the project sets, or the most specific dashboard page its files name. Keys are read by name only, and nothing is fetched to find a service.
Branches in one popup. Click the branch (⌥⌘B): search branches and actions, check out, branch, update, commit, push, rebase and merge. It asks before changing files under a working agent, keeps uncommitted changes in a named stash, and logs every git command exactly as typed (Git › Git Commands).
Worktrees. Open in New Worktree… on a branch, tag or commit in Branches (or when a switch would change the files under a working agent) checks it out in a folder of its own, beside the repository or in its .claude/worktrees, and opens it in its own window, so the checkout an agent works in keeps its branch and its changes. What git ignores there (.env, node_modules/, vendor/) the new folder can copy (APFS clones: independent, taking no space until either side changes), link (a link for each ignored entry, to the main checkout's: shared, so an install or an edit in either is in both, and nothing is copied; a bare repository has none, so Link is off there) or leave out, as you choose; the choice is remembered per repository. Linked, a workspace package still leads to the worktree's own source, and Composer's autoloader is cloned, so the worktree runs its branch's code. Linked entries have a link mark in the sidebar, and removing the worktree deletes only the links. Logs, Laravel's cached config, virtualenvs and Swift builds stay out either way; .worktreeinclude brings one back. Remove Worktree… never forces: the branch stays, and a worktree with changes stays too.
Git Log. The commit history as a graph in an editor tab (⌥⌘L): lanes per line of history, branch and tag badges, filters by branch, author, date, paths and message or hash, and each commit's changed files, with a double-click for a file's diff in that commit. It follows the repository as agents commit.
Git blame. View › Annotate with Git Blame shows who last changed each line, how long ago and the commit, beside the line numbers; click to see that commit in the Git Log. View › Current Line Blame adds a note after the line with the caret.
Changes in the gutter. A bar beside the line numbers marks the lines added (green) or changed (blue) since the last commit, and a red wedge where lines were deleted, as you type or an agent writes. Click a mark for the file's changes side by side.
Split panes. Split any tab right (⌘D, outside the editor) or down (⌘⇧D), as often as you like: an agent beside its test run, two agents side by side. Move between panes with ⌥⌘ and the arrows, maximize one with ⌘⇧↩, close it with ⌘W or the × in its header. The panes without the keyboard are shaded, and the tab's mark shows the pane that most needs you.
Git Diff (⌃⌘G). Everything a branch changed, the way a pull request shows it: the changed files as a tree with their +/− on the left, the selected file's diff on the right, or every file's on one page with long unchanged runs folded. Compare all the branch's changes since it left main, what isn't committed yet, or one commit. A click on the sidebar header's +/− opens it too.
Changes side by side or unified (⌥⌘G). A file's diff in the Git Diff tab: the old version beside the new, rows aligned, or one column top to bottom (View › Unified Diffs); the changed words marked, syntax-coloured. All changes, unstaged or staged; step through them and stage, unstage or revert one hunk at a time (⌘Z undoes a revert). Each action first checks the file is still what the diff showed, so a change an agent made meanwhile is never overwritten.
File operations. Rename (Return), drag to move (Option to copy), New File / New Folder, Move to Trash, all undoable with ⌘Z. Drag a file onto a terminal to type its path.
Go to File (⌘P). Type a few letters of a file's name or path and the list follows every keystroke: usrctl finds UserController.php; a whole file name, the start of a word and runs of letters rank first, and files you opened lately come first. name:42 opens it at line 42. Instant on large projects (git's file list, searched off the main thread).
Find and Replace in Files (⌘⇧F / ⌘⇧R) across the project, with regular expressions, file masks and a preview of every replacement; a file an agent changed since the search is never overwritten.
Dock badge and notifications for agents that finished, in another app or in a tab you are not looking at, and for commands that finished while you were in another app. Settings > Notifications chooses which ones notify, after how long, and with or without a sound. Agents › Go to Next Agent Needing You (⇧⌘U) goes to the one that has waited longest, in any window, herdr's agents one by one: a decision first, then a failure, then a finished agent; press it again for the next. The Dock menu lists the windows waiting.
Every menu shortcut is yours. Next Term > Settings (⌘,) > Keyboard Shortcuts lists every menu command; click one and press new keys. The shortcuts below are the defaults.
Bring your settings over. Coming from VS Code or an editor built on it (Cursor, Devin Desktop, Trae, Kiro, Antigravity, Positron, Qoder…), a JetBrains IDE, Zed, iTerm2, Ghostty, cmux, kitty, Alacritty, WezTerm, Kaku or Terminal? Next Term > Import Settings and Shortcuts… (also offered on first launch) brings the matching shortcut set, the keys you changed yourself, font size, line height, wrap, clean-up on save, hidden files, how a click in the sidebar opens files and folders, fonts, the terminal's colours, cursor, scrollback and start folder, and recent projects. Nothing changes unless you choose it: the preview shows every item as a checkbox, and what it leaves out and why; Undo Import puts it all back. It only reads, on this Mac, and never opens files that can hold secrets. Your agent can run it too, through Next Term's import tools: the import window opens with its choices ticked, and only your Apply changes anything. See Switching to Next Term.
Updates that keep your tabs. Next Term checks GitHub Releases once a day, at 11:00 or later in your time zone (or Check for Updates). A new version opens a window with what's new, and a blue Update button at the top right brings it back. It downloads and is checked against its checksum signed with the Next Term release key; the update sheet then says what happens to each tab before anything quits. After the update, or after a quit, your windows, tabs, splits and scrollback come back, Claude Code, Codex and Qwen Code resume their conversations as you started them, and other agents’ resume commands wait on the line for Return. A local OpenCode tab’s line names the session OpenCode was showing when its title matches exactly one of the folder’s sessions, so after opencode -c or a switch inside OpenCode, Return resumes the session you were in.
Native. Swift and AppKit, universal (Apple Silicon and Intel): about 33 MB to download, 71 MB installed. macOS 13 or later.

Install

In one line, from the terminal:

curl -fsSL https://nxtrm.mishuk.me/install.sh | bash

It downloads the latest release, checks its SHA-256, the bundle and the signature, and copies it to Applications. When a folder on your PATH takes nxtrm without a password, it links it there too; otherwise Next Term offers it when it opens. It never uses sudo, and macOS doesn't ask you to allow the first launch (the script). Or download NextTerm-x.y.z.dmg from Releases, open it, and drag Next Term to Applications. After that, Next Term updates itself (Next Term > Check for Updates).

Next Term is not notarized by Apple, so with the disk image macOS blocks the first launch. Allow it once:

macOS 15 and later: open Next Term once (it will be blocked), then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down, click Open Anyway next to Next Term, and confirm.
macOS 13 and 14: right-click Next Term in Applications, choose Open, then Open again.

Releases are signed with Next Term's own certificate, so what you allow (a folder, the camera, the microphone) stays allowed from one update to the next. The first update to a signed release may ask once more, and Full Disk Access, if you gave it, needs giving again once; see Release signing.

Each release includes NextTerm-x.y.z.dmg.sha256. Check the download with shasum -a 256 -c NextTerm-x.y.z.dmg.sha256 before allowing it.

Tab status

Mark	Meaning
none	At the prompt, a plain command running, or an agent working with View › Agent Spinner set to Off
spinner	An AI agent is working (View › Agent Spinner: Spinning, Still or Off; still in ⌘O and the window column)
green ✓	An agent stopped and is waiting for your next prompt, or a command finished: a dark ✓ on a soft green, quiet as nothing needs you yet (plain green with Increase Contrast)
amber !	An agent is waiting on your decision (the question is in the tooltip), or a program rang the bell
red ✕	A command exited with an error (the exit code is in the tooltip)

How it knows, most reliable first:

zsh integration. Next Term starts zsh with its own ZDOTDIR holding a tiny .zshenv. That file points ZDOTDIR back at your real config, loads your .zshenv, and adds preexec/precmd hooks that report each command (as typed and with aliases expanded), its exit code, the working directory and any suspended jobs. Your .zprofile, .zshrc and frameworks such as oh-my-zsh load exactly as before. A command Next Term or an agent runs by itself (MCP's new_tab and send_to_tab, a resume) stays out of zsh's history, so ↑ and autosuggestions never offer it; a line Next Term only puts on your prompt is yours once you press Return. A third hook reports the line as you edit it (what is typed, where the cursor is, and whether a plugin such as zsh-autosuggestions draws a suggestion), once no key is waiting: suggestions while typing and an agent's read_tab read it from there. Next Term's own suggestion is drawn over the terminal and never written into it; one is put on your line only through that hook, while the line is still the one it showed on.
Agents. claude, codex, commandcode, gemini and other agents stay in the foreground, so Next Term reads the agent’s own screen, the way you would: “esc to interrupt” means working, a question with choices means it is waiting on you, anything else means idle. These hints are checked against Claude Code, Codex, Command Code and Gemini CLI. OpenCode has hints of its own, read only in its tab: “esc interrupt” in its footer means working, its footer’s keys (“ctrl+p commands”) or “Ask anything…” mean idle, and its “Permission required” prompt or a question with numbered options means it is waiting on you; until its working hint first shows, output timing drives the spinner. Other agents (Junie, Qwen Code and the rest) go by output timing until their screen shows one of them: printing means working, 2.5 s of silence means done. When a command looks plain (a shell function), Next Term also asks the kernel what is really running.
Other shells. For bash and fish, or after exec bash, Next Term asks the kernel for the terminal's foreground process and working directory twice a second.

Interactive programs (vim, ssh, less, REPLs) are never reported as "done". Closing a tab or quitting asks first if a program is running or a job is suspended (Ctrl-Z) or in the background, and names it.

Many projects and agents

One window per project, and a few keys to move between them:

In Settings › General, leave At launch on Resume where I left off (the default), and set Projects to Open in New Window (or File › Open Projects In › New Window), so opening a project never asks.
Keep one window per repository for your own work. For an agent's task that would edit the same files, choose Open in New Worktree… on a branch (⌥⌘B): the task gets its own branch and window ("shop ▸ fix-login"). Rename the agent's tab after its task (⌥⌘R). Plain shells go in tabs (⌘T).
Press ⇧⌘U until nothing needs you. The Dock badge counts what you have not looked at yet; a question you looked at but did not answer keeps its amber mark in ⌘O.
⌘O then ↩ goes back to the window you used last; ⌘O and a few letters goes anywhere, and shows every window's agents. ⌘` moves between windows. The window column at each window's edge shows them all at once, with a dot on the one that needs you: a click on its badge goes there. If you turned it off, ⌃⇧⌘S brings it back.
View › Terminal Tabs › Left keeps tab names and marks readable; View › Project Color gives each repository its colour.
When a worktree's branch is merged, close its window with Close and Remove Worktree.

Keyboard

Action	Keys
New tab (in the project, or the current tab's folder)	⌘T
New window (where new tabs open: your home folder unless Settings › Terminal says otherwise)	⌘N
New remote tab (on one of your servers)	⌥⌘T
Switch to or open a project (the Welcome window: ↩ go there, ⌘↩ new window, ⌘1–⌘9 the first nine; ⌘O again there for any folder) / Close project	⌘O / File menu
Go to File (`name` or `name:line`)	⌘P
Go to the next agent needing you, in any window (again for the one after)	⇧⌘U
Resume an agent session (↩ resume or go to its tab, ⌘↩ fork)	⌥⌘O
Close tab (or the focused pane in a split tab)	⌘W
Split right / split down (in the editor, ⌘D duplicates the line)	⌘D / ⌘⇧D
Move between panes	⌥⌘← ⌥⌘→ ⌥⌘↑ ⌥⌘↓, or ⌥⌘] / ⌥⌘[ in turn
Go to an agent, herdr's or a tab's (in any window; type its name, or 1–9)	⌃⌘A
Peek at an agent (in Go to Agent, or on its row)	⌥
Maximize the pane (and back)	⌘⇧↩
Select tab 1–8 / last tab	⌘1…⌘8 / ⌘9
Next / previous tab	⌘⇧] / ⌘⇧[, Ctrl-Tab / Ctrl-Shift-Tab
Rename tab	⌥⌘R, or double-click the tab
Project sidebar (in a Markdown file, ⌘B is Bold)	⌘B
Fold the terminal away (and back)	⌘J
Unfold the window column in every window (and fold it)	⌃⌘S
Hide the window column in every window (and show it)	⌃⇧⌘S
Find / next / previous	⌘F / ⌘G / ⌘⇧G
Use the selection for Find	⌘E
Replace in the open file	⌥⌘F
Find in Files / Replace in Files	⌘⇧F / ⌘⇧R
Clear (in a Markdown file, ⌘K makes a link)	⌘K
Take the suggestion while typing / one word of it / hide it	→ (or End, ⌃E, ⌃F) / ⌥→ / Esc
Forget the suggestion showing (never suggested again)	⇧⌘⌫
Font size	⌘+ / ⌘- / ⌘0
Option as Meta (for Emacs-style keys)	File menu, off by default
Save / Save All	⌘S / ⌥⌘S
Close the file being edited	⌘W (with the editor focused)
Comment line / Go to line	⌘/ / ⌘L
Markdown Live Preview or its source (the Markdown file in front)	⇧⌘V
Bold / Italic / Link / Strikethrough (in a Markdown file)	⌘B / ⌘I / ⌘K / ⇧⌘X
Heading 1–6 / Body Text (in a Markdown file)	⌥⌘1…⌥⌘6 / ⌥⌘0
Toggle Task / Go to Heading (in a Markdown file)	⇧⌘L / ⇧⌘O
Soft wrap	⌥⌘W
Show a file's changes	⌥⌘G
Git Diff (the changed files and their diffs)	⌃⌘G
Branches (the branch popup)	⌥⌘B
Git Log (the commit graph)	⌥⌘L
Fetch / Update Project / Commit… / Push… / New Branch…	⌘R / ⌥⌘U / ⇧⌘C / ⌥⌘P / ⇧⌘B
Send to Agent	⌥⌘K
Add a task (to the project's destination)	⌃⌘T
Indent / Outdent	⌘] / ⌘[ (Tab / ⇧Tab on selected lines)
Between editor and terminal	⌃`
Keyboard Shortcuts (change any menu shortcut)	⌘,

In the sidebar: Return renames, ⌘⌫ moves to the Trash, ⌘↓ or double-click opens (or one click, which also opens and closes folders: Settings › Editor › Open files and folders with a single click, on for new installs), and ⌘↑ selects the enclosing folder. Right-click for Open in New Tab, Open as Project, Reveal in Finder, Insert Path in Terminal, Copy Path and Copy Relative Path. Tabs can be dragged to reorder; middle-click closes; tabs that don't fit go behind the » button.

In a terminal, when a program reads the mouse (herdr, tmux, vim with the mouse on), right and middle clicks go to it; Shift-right-click or Control-click opens Next Term's menu. A tab Next Term's own tmux keeps on a server keeps Next Term's menu.

Security

Privacy prompts: Next Term never reads your Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Movies, Music, ~/Library (with iCloud Drive and cloud-storage folders) or other disks on its own. The sidebar's scans, git status, Go to File, Find in Files and the checks at launch leave them out, and your home folder, /, /Volumes and ~/Library are never a project, so opening a terminal asks for nothing. A project you open inside one of them, or a folder you open in the tree, works as any other: macOS asks once, because you went there. If you said Don't Allow, the folder says macOS hasn't given Next Term access, with a button to the System Settings pane that changes it, and nothing asks again. Settings › General › Full Disk Access… opens that pane for anyone who wants every folder without prompts; Next Term never asks for it. When macOS asks, it says "Next Term, or a command running in it, wants to access…": macOS asks in Next Term's name for the programs in its tabs too, and every kind of access a program could ask for has a reason given.
Clipboard: programs can copy to the clipboard (OSC 52) only from the tab you are looking at, and can never read it, so a remote host over ssh cannot harvest what you copied. ⌘V strips control characters.
Screen contents cannot be read back through terminal queries (DECRQCRA answers are blanked).
Status marks from the shell carry a random per-tab secret that programs never see, so output (a cat of a log, a remote host) cannot fake "command finished" and skip the close confirmation.
Paths you drop, paste or insert are quoted so that no file name can run a command, even one containing control characters, and are sent as a bracketed paste.
Opening files from the sidebar or with ⌘-click asks first when the file is an app, a script or an executable, including behind a symlink or a Finder alias (cloned repos carry no quarantine flag, so Gatekeeper would not ask). Links other than http, https, mailto and local files are refused.
The MCP server listens on a Unix socket only you can open (0600, and each connection is checked to be yours), never on the network. Agents reach it through nxtrm mcp, which they start themselves. Tabs refuse input from their own agent, and a tab running something closes only when told to force it.
Suggestions while typing come from Next Term's record of the commands you ran in its zsh tabs, kept on this Mac only, in ~/Library/Application Support/Next Term/History.noindex (a folder only you can open, which Spotlight leaves out): each line, when it last ran, how often, its exit, its folder and repository, and the commands that followed it. A command Next Term or an agent ran is never recorded, nor a line that holds a secret (one of your stored keys, a token or a password), starts with a space, or spans lines, nor anything while suggestions are off or View › Private Mode is on (which lasts until you turn it off or quit). zsh's history file is never read or changed. Edit › Forget This Suggestion removes one, and Settings › Terminal › While typing › Clear History… removes them all. Agents never see Next Term's suggestion.
Secrets (the Secrets menu, and Settings › Secrets) keeps API and MCP keys in a vault on your Mac, each value sealed on disk, with the key that opens them guarded by the Secure Enclave (on a Mac without one, by the login keychain, which Settings calls less protected); the names, what each key is for, who added it, the link to its page, its settings and its dates are not encrypted. Agents use a key by name, after Next Term’s own panel shows who asks, which keys and the command, and you approve with Touch ID or your password; no MCP tool returns a value. A key’s “Ask for Touch ID every time it’s used” is ticked by default (untick it in its Edit… sheet), and while it is, a request that uses the key offers only Allow once. A key set to “Never show this key” is never shown or copied, even to you, and that can’t be undone; commands you allow still get it. The New keys group in Settings › Secrets sets how both start for the keys you add, an agent asks you for, or import. Stored keys are masked, best effort, in what agents read through Next Term. A command you approve gets the key in its environment, and for as long as it runs, any program running as you can read it there (ps -E shows it), an agent’s own shell tool included, which Next Term’s masks never see. The command can also send the key on, and Secrets can’t stop malware already running as you. Secrets › Import From leaves a file it copies keys from as it was, and changes an MCP config only once you choose the keys to move out of it. For 1Password, Bitwarden and Bitwarden Secrets Manager, Next Term types the CLI’s line into a new tab and never presses Return: you unlock 1Password or Bitwarden at its CLI’s own prompt (bws reads its access token from the tab’s environment), and the keys go by pipe, never onto the screen. After a 1Password import, close that tab to end 1Password’s authorization for it. While bw list items runs, Bitwarden’s session key is in that command’s environment, where ps -E can read it, and the line’s bw lock ends the session right after. Next Term doesn’t rotate keys through providers’ APIs: you make the new key, and delete or deactivate the old one, on the provider’s page. See Secrets.
Tasks leave the Mac only where you send them, and Next Term makes no request for them and holds no account or token: an app (Reminders, Things, a Shortcut, Todoist, OmniFocus) gets the task on this Mac, a tracker's page opens in your browser filled in and saves nothing until you submit it there, and a request to your agent is typed into its tab with no Return. What leaves is shown in the Add Task sheet, or in the approval window for an agent's add_task, before anything is sent, with stored keys as •••; team pages get the branch only, never the tab, agent or resume command. Reminders asks macOS for access only when you first choose it. A short record of what went where (masked titles, 30 days) stays in Application Support for the duplicate warning and Undo, and task text is never logged. Wrap Up and Post Update make no request either: handoffs and updates are files in your project, and today's commits are read only for your own user.email. See where tasks go and Wrap Up and Post Update.
SQLite editing: the SQLite viewer opens every file read-only (SQLite's read-only mode, query_only, and immutable when nothing is in its write-ahead log). Editing is opt-in per tab: Allow Editing… asks first, saying the file may belong to an app that is running now and naming the processes that have it open, and the allowance is bound to that file in that tab, ends when the tab closes, you click Stop Editing or the file is replaced, and is never remembered. Nothing is written until you click Save (or ⌘S, or Return in the cell): then one value is written, in one transaction on a connection of its own (SQLite's defensive mode on, so a full-text index's own tables and the schema stay read-only), by one UPDATE OR ABORT keyed by the row's rowid or primary key. It changes the cell only if the cell still holds, byte for byte and of the same type, the value that was read, and the row's other values are still the ones read, since a key alone can name another row once SQLite gives a rowid out again. OR ABORT overrides a table's own ON CONFLICT REPLACE or IGNORE, so a save never deletes another row. If anything differs, or the file is busy, nothing is written and the viewer says why. Edit › Undo writes the old value back the same checked way. A file with no -wal beside it gets none. A value typed and not saved is asked about before its tab closes; closing it with other tabs, closing its window or quitting warns first and writes nothing. Views, virtual tables and their own tables, key and generated columns and blobs can't be edited. No agent or MCP tool can allow editing or write a database.
Git: the sidebar reads status with read-only calls and --no-optional-locks, so it never holds the index lock while your own git commands run. On its own, Next Term only runs git fetch: every 10 minutes while it is the active app, and as the branch popup opens if the last fetch is over 5 minutes old. That updates remote-tracking branches and tags, never your branches, files or index, and Settings › Editor › Git turns it off. Everything else runs only when you ask: checkout, merge, rebase, commit, push, stash, the sidebar's Pull and Push, and staging a hunk. Next Term asks first when an agent is working in the folder, puts changes a switch would overwrite in a named stash, and force-pushes only with a lease on the commits it showed you, never to main, master, release/* or the default branch <remote>/HEAD names.

Build from source

Needs macOS 13+ and Swift 6 (the Xcode Command Line Tools are enough; full Xcode is not required).

git clone https://github.com/MishukAdhikari/next-term.git
cd next-term
swift run NextTerm            # run a debug build
scripts/build-dmg.sh          # universal app + DMG + checksum in dist/, and NextTerm.dSYM for crash reports

To sign with the release identity, as CI signs releases (Release signing): SIGN_ID=<its SHA-1> scripts/build-dmg.sh. To sign and notarize for distribution: SIGN_ID="Developer ID Application: Your Name (TEAMID)" NOTARY_PROFILE=<notarytool profile> scripts/build-dmg.sh.

Tests

scripts/test.sh                          # unit tests: status, agents, git, files, editor, nxtrm, shortcuts, updates
python3 scripts/zsh-integration-test.py  # the shipped zsh hooks, in a real pty, with your zsh config
scripts/selftest.sh                      # end-to-end: drives the real app (opens a window)
scripts/orphan-check.sh                  # release check: what keeps running after Quit, closing tabs, Force Quit
scripts/perf-budget.sh                   # release check: CPU, drawing, git and memory budgets of a release build

The self-test opens real tabs and shells and checks every status transition, agent detection, jobs, close confirmations, process cleanup, the security protections, projects, the sidebar with git, file operations and undo, tab overflow, the editor (colours, editing, saving, files changed by agents, long files), layouts, nxtrm, shortcuts, the agent links and the MCP server (driven through nxtrm mcp as an agent would), then writes a report and screenshots.

Layout

Sources/NextTermCore/   platform-neutral logic, no AppKit: TabStatus, AgentScreen, CommandClassifier,
                        ShellIntegration, Git, CommitLog and CommitGraph, Diff, HunkOps, FileTree and
                        FileOps, ProjectSearch, TextFile and LineIndex, EditorLanguage, CommandLineOpen,
                        KeyChord, Updates, MCPServer, MCPProjectTools, MCPRedaction and MCPRegistrar (the
                        agent-facing MCP server, its file, search and git tools with their path and secrets
                        rules, and its registration in each agent)
Sources/NextTerm/       the macOS app: windows, tabs, sidebar, editor, projects, menus, shortcuts, updates,
                        notifications, self-test
Resources/Highlighting/ the shipped grammars (scripts/update-highlighting.py) and the Next Dark theme
Tests/                  unit tests (swift-testing)
scripts/                build, test, signing and icon scripts
docs/                   release signing (signing.md) and the todo file format (todo-files.md)

NextTermCore has no AppKit dependency, so another front end can reuse it. An iPad or iPhone app (SwiftTerm supports UIKit) could reuse most of it, but not as it is: it runs git with Foundation's Process and finds the home folder with homeDirectoryForCurrentUser, and iOS has neither.

Roadmap

Coming: a server's files in the editor and sidebar next to its remote tabs, then Dev Containers. Later: more of the diff view and session restore. A Linux build would need a different UI layer (AppKit is macOS-only); the core logic would carry over.

Credits

Terminal emulation by SwiftTerm (MIT). Syntax highlighting by shiki-swift (MIT) with Oniguruma (BSD), using TextMate grammars from shikijs/textmate-grammars-themes, each under its own permissive licence (list). File icons from the Material Icon Theme (MIT), whose icons draw on Pictogrammers' Material Design Icons and Google's Material Symbols (Apache 2.0), rendered with SwiftDraw (zlib).

License

MIT. See LICENSE and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Next Term

The missing IDE for the terminal.

Download for macOS · website and documentation: nxtrm.mishuk.me

Agent status, in step with the agent. A spinner shows while an agent is working, read from the agent's own screen ("esc to interrupt") for Claude Code, Codex, Command Code and Gemini CLI, and from OpenCode's own footer ("esc interrupt") for OpenCode, so it stops the moment they stop; other agents go by output timing. A green check means done and waiting for your next prompt, an amber "!" means it is asking you something. Plain commands show no spinner and end with a check or a red cross. Marks clear when you look at the tab.
Decisions come to you. When an agent asks for permission ("Do you want to make this edit…?"), a notification says so with the question; click it to land on that tab. OpenCode's "Permission required" prompt and its questions count too, and the notification quotes the request, such as "Permission required: Shell command ($ npm test)". Works however you start the agent: directly, through an alias or a shell function, npx or bunx, or cd app && claude.
Code editor. Click a file once in the sidebar (Settings › Editor › Open files and folders with a single click, on for new installs; off, double-click), pick a Find in Files result, or ⌘-click src/app.ts:42:7 in any output: the file opens above the terminal at that line, coloured by 112 TextMate grammars, the kind VS Code uses: PHP and Blade (Laravel, WordPress), Ruby and ERB (Rails), Python and Jinja (Django, Flask), JS/TS/TSX (React, Next.js), Vue, Svelte, Astro, Angular, Liquid, Twig, Go and templ, Rust, Elixir, YAML, SQL and more. Line numbers, adjustable line height, soft wrap, auto-indent, ⌘/ to comment, ⌘L to go to a line, find, undo. Files keep their encoding, line endings and permissions. When an agent changes a file you have open, the editor follows; if you have unsaved edits it asks first. Markdown files open in Live Preview, styled where you type, with the syntax showing only on the lines you are on: a click ticks a box, ⌘-click follows a link, Return continues a list, Edit › Markdown formats in the markers the file already uses, Go to Heading jumps through it with a word count, and the file's bytes never change unless you type (⇧⌘V shows its source).
Jupyter notebooks, read-only. A .ipynb opens as cells: Markdown laid out, code coloured in the kernel's language, and the outputs saved in the file (text, tables as text, images and errors). Nothing runs (there is no kernel); Open as JSON shows the file itself.
Large data files. A JSON Lines, CSV or TSV file over 2 MB opens in a read-only head view: its first 1,000 rows as a table, as fast for a 2 GB file as for a small one, with Load More, search and Copy As; click a cell for its whole value (a JSON object indented, as written). Logs and other text files over 32 MB open there too.
⌘V pastes an image into your agent. With a screenshot or another image alone on the clipboard, ⌘V in a tab running Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Qwen Code, OpenCode, Cursor Agent or Command Code sends that agent ⌃V, its own key for an image, and it reads the image from the clipboard itself. At a shell, in Copilot CLI or any other program on this Mac, the image is kept as a PNG in a new folder only you can read, for a day, and its quoted path is pasted; in a tab logged in to another machine by hand (ssh) nothing is pasted. A file copied in Finder pastes as its full path, as dropping it does (its name in a tab on a server or logged in elsewhere: a paste never copies a file there). Text on the clipboard always pastes as text. A pasted image is removed a day later, at the next paste or launch.
Send to Agent (⌥⌘K). Select code in the editor or a diff, or files and folders in the sidebar, and send them to the agent in your tab: Next Term types the reference in that agent’s own syntax (@app/User.php#L10-20 for Claude, @app/User.php#10-20 for OpenCode, app/User.php:10-20 for Codex and others) and hands you the prompt to add your instruction. It never presses Enter for you.
Tasks for tomorrow's agent. Tasks › Add Task… (⌃⌘T) turns a prompt into a task, filled from what you selected: the first line is what to do, list lines its steps, the rest notes, planned for tomorrow unless you pick another day. Each task is one Markdown file in the project's todo/ folder (the main checkout's, in a worktree), with - [ ] boxes and where you were (branch, tab, agent and the command that resumes its session), so an agent there tomorrow reads it with its own tools. Agents add tasks too, with the MCP tool add_task, which asks you on the Mac first and shows the exact file. Stored keys show as •••, Undo takes a task back, and Settings › Tasks chooses another folder. Tasks go where each project says (Settings › Tasks or Tasks › Send Tasks To): the todo folder, Reminders, Things, a Shortcut, Todoist or OmniFocus Quick Add, a prefilled GitHub, GitLab, Linear, Trello or Azure Boards page, or typed to your agent for its tracker. Next Term makes no request for any of this: an app gets the task on this Mac, a page opens in your browser for you to submit, and an agent's request is typed for you to send. Tasks › Connect a Tracker to Your Agents… types each agent's own line to add a tracker's MCP server into a new tab, and never runs it. Tasks › Wrap Up… (⌃⌘W) asks your idle agent tabs for a handoff in docs/handoffs/ and turns their next steps into tomorrow's tasks after you review them; Tasks › Post Update… drafts Done, Next and Blocked from today's handoffs, tasks and commits for you to copy, save or hand to an agent. Next Term sends neither anywhere. See the todo file format, where tasks go and Wrap Up and Post Update.
Agents see your editor. Claude Code, Gemini CLI, Qwen Code, GitHub Copilot CLI and OpenCode in a Next Term tab connect to Next Term as their IDE, the way they connect to VS Code: the lines you select go with your next prompt (“⧉ 10 lines selected”), and ⌥⌘K puts @file#L10-20 into Claude’s prompt (@file:10-20 into Copilot’s, and the same lines into OpenCode’s, counted from 1 as OpenCode counts them). When Claude, Gemini, Qwen or Copilot wants to edit a file, its change opens as a diff to Accept (⌘↩) or Reject, as in VS Code; answering in the terminal works too. OpenCode’s link shares your selection only: its edits don’t open as diffs, and it links from a local tab, not from tmux or a remote tab. Nothing to set up: Next Term turns Gemini’s and Qwen’s IDE mode on for you. Local only, with a fresh secret per launch; .env files are never shared; Settings turns it off.
Orchestrate agents across projects (MCP). Next Term is an MCP server for any agent: Claude Code and the Claude desktop app, Codex and the ChatGPT desktop app, Gemini CLI, Qwen Code, Cursor, OpenCode, Copilot CLI, Amp, Junie and Command Code. One agent can run the others. It sees every project and tab with each agent's state (working, done, waiting for a decision and the question), opens projects, starts an agent in a new tab, gives it a prompt, waits until it stops, reads its screen, answers its questions (only the question it saw, never a newer one), reads the projects' files, searches them and sees their git status and diffs (secrets files refused, secret-looking values masked), and uses the editor (the selection, open files, opening a file at a line). It answers OpenCode too: Allow once, Allow always or Reject, and a question’s option by its number. It presses Return on an OpenCode button only once OpenCode’s screen shows that button selected, so in a theme that doesn’t show it, only Reject can be answered. Next Term adds itself to the agents it finds, with nothing to run; Settings turns it off and removes it again (from the Claude desktop app once Claude is closed). The tools are marked honestly, so agents ask you before they type into a tab, and the ones that change files, git, settings or your tasks (add_task) wait for your Approve on the Mac. At a zsh prompt, reading a tab also gives the line being typed and the cursor, and any suggestion a zsh plugin draws, which is left out of the screen once Next Term finds it where zsh drew it, so it isn't read as typed. Local only: a private socket, no network port. Each of herdr's agents has an id of its own in list_tabs, which the tab tools take as they take a tab's: an agent reads another's pane, prompts it, presses its keys or answers its question through herdr, even when another pane has herdr's keyboard, and only that agent counts as driven. Text sent to one is herdr's argument on the server while it runs, so text holding a stored key is refused.
Secrets. API and MCP keys sealed on your Mac, used by agents by name after you approve with Touch ID or your password. Secrets › Import From copies keys in from .env, JSON, TOML, YAML and CSV files and password-manager exports, moves them out of your MCP configs, or takes them from your own 1Password, Bitwarden or Bitwarden Secrets Manager CLI in a tab you can see; it brings in only the rows you tick, with Undo. Rotate… opens a key’s page from its link and takes the new key in the same sheet; it keeps the old key masked for 30 days and can remind you when a key gets old (Secrets › Keys Due to Rotate). Each key asks for Touch ID every time it’s used until you untick that, and a key set to “Never show this key” is never shown or copied, even to you. See Secrets.
Pick up any agent's conversation. The Welcome window lists your projects; choose one and every conversation Claude Code, Codex, Command Code, Gemini CLI, Qwen Code, OpenCode, Cursor Agent and Copilot CLI kept for it is there, newest first, with its title, branch and model, including the ones started in its subfolders. Resume runs it again in a new tab, in the folder it was started in; Fork continues a copy; a session open in a tab offers Go to Tab instead; type to search them by title, agent, branch or model. In a project window, ⌥⌘O does the same, and the sidebar's Agent Sessions group shows the newest five, marks the running ones and continues an agent's latest session. Only titles and dates are read (never whole transcripts), secrets are scrubbed from titles, and nothing is written.
Suggestions while typing. At a zsh prompt, the rest of the newest command of yours that starts with what you typed shows dimmed after the cursor: → (or End, ⌃E, ⌃F) takes it, ⌥→ one word, Esc hides it, and Return runs only what you typed. It is drawn over the terminal, never into it, so copy, Find, the scrollback and an agent reading the tab never take it for typed text, and before it shows it is checked: a cd to a folder that is gone, a missing file or program, or a command that never ran well is not suggested. It comes from Next Term's own record of the commands you ran in its zsh tabs, on this Mac: never an agent's, never a line with a secret, and nothing while View › Private Mode is on; until that record has your commands, zsh's own history in the shell fills in. Right after a command, the empty prompt shows the one that usually follows it, when that is clear. Where zsh-autosuggestions (or Atuin through it) shows its own, Next Term shows none and asks once which you want, without touching your .zshrc. View › Suggestions While Typing turns it off or on, and Settings › Terminal › While typing does too, says how many commands are kept and clears them.
Remote tabs on your servers. File › New Remote Tab… (⌥⌘T) opens a tab on your VPS over your own ssh and ~/.ssh/config. With tmux or herdr on the server, agents keep working while the Mac sleeps or is off, and the tab reattaches when it reconnects. Host keys are never accepted silently, nothing is installed on the server except the Tab hook you allow, and no password is stored. Agents get seven MCP tools to open tabs there and read the changes. To find herdr, a herdr tab uses the copy your running herdr server runs, or may run your login shell on the server once (no terminal, 3 seconds at most) to read its PATH; when herdr isn't there, the tab says where it looked and links herdr's install page. A file or folder dropped on a remote tab, or an image pasted into one, is copied to the server first, into a new folder only you can read there, and its path there is what gets pasted.
herdr's agents, one by one. A herdr tab follows each of herdr's agents, with herdr's own state, name and title: a row each under the tab in the tab list, with how long it has waited and, with Show Folders, the question it asks; past six agents the idle ones fold into one row. Click a row and herdr shows that agent's pane; ⌥-click peeks. Window › Go to Agent… (⌃⌘A) lists every agent in every window, herdr's and your agent tabs alike, what needs you first, oldest first. Agents › Go to Next Agent Needing You (⇧⌘U) counts each of herdr's agents as it counts a tab, so it goes straight to that agent's pane, and the Dock menu lists its window. Each agent gets its own notice, one however many tabs show its session, with the question read from its own pane once herdr has read it blocked twice in a row, its choices as buttons and Reply on a finished one, each checked against the screen first; a notice goes away once the agent no longer needs you. An agent of a connected herdr server with no herdr tab gets herdr's own words and no buttons: a click opens a herdr tab there, on its pane. Mute Notices and Keep as Unread are on a row's menu, and the Dock badge counts the agents waiting on you once, however many tabs show them. Peek reads an agent, answers its question or sends it a line (kept as a draft) without moving herdr's view; ⌘E there shows why herdr gives its state, and ⌘2 its conversation, from the transcript herdr names (Claude Code and Codex). A tab can open one of herdr's named sessions, picked in New Remote Tab; a connected herdr server with no herdr tab still shows its agents in Go to Agent, and a saved herdr server is one choice away. herdr run in a tab on this Mac gets the same, the machines saved in it included, read through that herdr; that tab is only read, never kept or reopened. Keep herdr's ui.toast.delivery at its default when Next Term follows herdr on this Mac, or herdr posts its own notices too. Next Term tells programs that ask (herdr, vim, tmux) when its window or the app loses the focus, so herdr keeps a finish you have not seen. It runs only herdr's own commands (its agent list, read, prompt, keys, focus and explain, its sessions and its list of machines): it never installs, starts, stops or updates herdr, never changes its machines, and never ends one of its agents.
nxtrm, like code. nxtrm . opens the folder as a project, nxtrm app/User.php:42 a file at a line. It works in every Next Term tab from the first launch, and in other terminals too: the first launch links it into a folder on your PATH that needs no password (~/.local/bin, /opt/homebrew/bin), or, when there is none, offers to put it in /usr/local/bin with your password. It never changes PATH or touches anyone else's nxtrm.
Your layout. The terminal below the editor (default), beside it on the right or left, or above it; the project sidebar on the left or right; the terminal's tabs on top or in a list down its left or right, with split panes as rows under each tab (View › Terminal Tabs). From the ⋯ buttons, the View menu or Settings › Terminal. ⌘J folds the terminal away so the editor gets the room, and brings it back at its size.
Projects. ⌘O brings up the Welcome window with the keyboard in its search: type a few letters, and Return goes to the window of an open project, opens a closed one, or goes to a saved server's window, connecting when none is open. Open projects come first, each marked with a filled dot and counted (a closed one has a ring), then the ones you used last, including those an agent, a worktree window or a restore opened. Every open window has a row: a project's other windows under it, and New Terminal's and a server's windows too, each with its agents' marks as the tab bar shows them, a lost connection's server mark among them. ⌘1–⌘9 jump to the first nine rows, and ⌘Return opens a project, or connects to a server, in a new window. The list keeps your last 50 projects; Open Recent shows 10. ⌘O again there (or Open…) opens any folder as a project. Its window keeps the project in the sidebar, and new tabs open in it by default. Window titles start with the project ("shop ▸ fix-login — claude"; "~/Downloads — vim" with no project), so the Window menu and Mission Control tell windows apart. Next Term resumes where you left off by default (the first launch shows the Welcome window), or opens to the Welcome window or a new terminal, as you choose. Open Recent and Close Project too.
Project colours. Each project's window has a colour of its own, a soft glow along its top row, strongest behind the window's buttons and gone 320 points in, so two windows side by side are told apart at a glance. It is picked the first time a project opens (the colour the open windows use least) and then kept. A worktree's window has its repository's colour, and the Welcome window's dots show it. Right-click the top row, or View › Project Color, for nine named colours, Automatic or None for This Project; Show Project Colors there, or in Settings › General, turns them all off. Nothing is written into the project.
The window column. With two or more windows open, every window shows a thin column at its outer edge, on the project sidebar's side (the far left, or the far right with the sidebar on the right): a badge for each open window in the order they opened, in its project's colour with two letters of its name, a worktree's under its repository's, and a dot when an agent there needs you, failed or finished. The count of windows is at its top, and your own window's badge sits in a darker well, as the tab you are in does. It stays quiet on purpose: only a decision or a failure stands out. A click on a badge brings that window forward as it was. ⌃⌘S, or the chevron, unfolds it in every window to show each window's name and marks, as ⌘O does; a window too narrow for it folds it, then hides it, until it is wider. When it appears, the editor and terminal give it the room and the sidebar keeps its width. View › Hide Window Column (⌃⇧⌘S), or Settings › General, turns it off, and the same key brings it back. With it off and at least two more windows open than when you hid it (five at least), Next Term offers it once, two weeks on at the soonest; with it on and five windows open, it says once how to hide it. An agent can show, hide, fold or unfold it with set_layout, once you approve on the Mac.
A new terminal stays out of your files. New Terminal (⌘N) opens a shell where new tabs open (Settings › Terminal › New tabs: your home folder unless you chose a folder). With no project, its sidebar says "No project open" and lists your recent projects, Open Folder…, Connect to Server… and Browse Home Folder, and no files; cd into a project and its tree appears, with Open as Project Window. Browse Home Folder shows your home folder's files in that window, each folder read only when you open it. While you browse it, a bar over the tree shows where you are; Back, or ⌘↑ from the home folder, returns to No project open. Start an agent in your home folder and Next Term offers once to open a project for it instead (Don't Ask Again turns that off); the agent runs either way.
Project sidebar with git. The project as a live file tree: changed files and folders coloured, with +12 −3 line counts like a pull request, and the branch and total changes at the top, with a Pull 152 button when the upstream has commits you don't (Next Term fetches every 10 minutes, so it appears without a click). Files your agents create or change show up on their own.
Databases. A Databases group in the sidebar lists the databases a project's own files name (Laravel and Herd DB_* keys, DATABASE_URL, Prisma, Drizzle, Supabase, Vercel-linked projects, SQLite files), found by reading them, without running project code; local or remote by host, passwords masked. SQLite files open in a viewer that stays read-only until you allow editing in its tab; click a cell for its whole value, up to 4 MB (text wrapped, JSON indented, a blob's size and first bytes in hex, the row beside it). Other connections open in TablePlus when it is installed (libSQL aside), and local and development ones (Docker, OrbStack) in mysql or psql in a new tab. Each provider badge (Neon, Supabase, Vercel, Herd and others) opens that provider's page in the browser.
Services. Below Databases, a Services group lists what else a project's files name: AI model providers, vector stores, tracing and evals, agent frameworks, local dev servers, backends and hosting. Each row's badge opens its page: a local server on the port the project sets, or the most specific dashboard page its files name. Keys are read by name only, and nothing is fetched to find a service.
Branches in one popup. Click the branch (⌥⌘B): search branches and actions, check out, branch, update, commit, push, rebase and merge. It asks before changing files under a working agent, keeps uncommitted changes in a named stash, and logs every git command exactly as typed (Git › Git Commands).
Worktrees. Open in New Worktree… on a branch, tag or commit in Branches (or when a switch would change the files under a working agent) checks it out in a folder of its own, beside the repository or in its .claude/worktrees, and opens it in its own window, so the checkout an agent works in keeps its branch and its changes. What git ignores there (.env, node_modules/, vendor/) the new folder can copy (APFS clones: independent, taking no space until either side changes), link (a link for each ignored entry, to the main checkout's: shared, so an install or an edit in either is in both, and nothing is copied; a bare repository has none, so Link is off there) or leave out, as you choose; the choice is remembered per repository. Linked, a workspace package still leads to the worktree's own source, and Composer's autoloader is cloned, so the worktree runs its branch's code. Linked entries have a link mark in the sidebar, and removing the worktree deletes only the links. Logs, Laravel's cached config, virtualenvs and Swift builds stay out either way; .worktreeinclude brings one back. Remove Worktree… never forces: the branch stays, and a worktree with changes stays too.
Git Log. The commit history as a graph in an editor tab (⌥⌘L): lanes per line of history, branch and tag badges, filters by branch, author, date, paths and message or hash, and each commit's changed files, with a double-click for a file's diff in that commit. It follows the repository as agents commit.
Git blame. View › Annotate with Git Blame shows who last changed each line, how long ago and the commit, beside the line numbers; click to see that commit in the Git Log. View › Current Line Blame adds a note after the line with the caret.
Changes in the gutter. A bar beside the line numbers marks the lines added (green) or changed (blue) since the last commit, and a red wedge where lines were deleted, as you type or an agent writes. Click a mark for the file's changes side by side.
Split panes. Split any tab right (⌘D, outside the editor) or down (⌘⇧D), as often as you like: an agent beside its test run, two agents side by side. Move between panes with ⌥⌘ and the arrows, maximize one with ⌘⇧↩, close it with ⌘W or the × in its header. The panes without the keyboard are shaded, and the tab's mark shows the pane that most needs you.
Git Diff (⌃⌘G). Everything a branch changed, the way a pull request shows it: the changed files as a tree with their +/− on the left, the selected file's diff on the right, or every file's on one page with long unchanged runs folded. Compare all the branch's changes since it left main, what isn't committed yet, or one commit. A click on the sidebar header's +/− opens it too.
Changes side by side or unified (⌥⌘G). A file's diff in the Git Diff tab: the old version beside the new, rows aligned, or one column top to bottom (View › Unified Diffs); the changed words marked, syntax-coloured. All changes, unstaged or staged; step through them and stage, unstage or revert one hunk at a time (⌘Z undoes a revert). Each action first checks the file is still what the diff showed, so a change an agent made meanwhile is never overwritten.
File operations. Rename (Return), drag to move (Option to copy), New File / New Folder, Move to Trash, all undoable with ⌘Z. Drag a file onto a terminal to type its path.
Go to File (⌘P). Type a few letters of a file's name or path and the list follows every keystroke: usrctl finds UserController.php; a whole file name, the start of a word and runs of letters rank first, and files you opened lately come first. name:42 opens it at line 42. Instant on large projects (git's file list, searched off the main thread).
Find and Replace in Files (⌘⇧F / ⌘⇧R) across the project, with regular expressions, file masks and a preview of every replacement; a file an agent changed since the search is never overwritten.
Dock badge and notifications for agents that finished, in another app or in a tab you are not looking at, and for commands that finished while you were in another app. Settings > Notifications chooses which ones notify, after how long, and with or without a sound. Agents › Go to Next Agent Needing You (⇧⌘U) goes to the one that has waited longest, in any window, herdr's agents one by one: a decision first, then a failure, then a finished agent; press it again for the next. The Dock menu lists the windows waiting.
Every menu shortcut is yours. Next Term > Settings (⌘,) > Keyboard Shortcuts lists every menu command; click one and press new keys. The shortcuts below are the defaults.
Bring your settings over. Coming from VS Code or an editor built on it (Cursor, Devin Desktop, Trae, Kiro, Antigravity, Positron, Qoder…), a JetBrains IDE, Zed, iTerm2, Ghostty, cmux, kitty, Alacritty, WezTerm, Kaku or Terminal? Next Term > Import Settings and Shortcuts… (also offered on first launch) brings the matching shortcut set, the keys you changed yourself, font size, line height, wrap, clean-up on save, hidden files, how a click in the sidebar opens files and folders, fonts, the terminal's colours, cursor, scrollback and start folder, and recent projects. Nothing changes unless you choose it: the preview shows every item as a checkbox, and what it leaves out and why; Undo Import puts it all back. It only reads, on this Mac, and never opens files that can hold secrets. Your agent can run it too, through Next Term's import tools: the import window opens with its choices ticked, and only your Apply changes anything. See Switching to Next Term.
Updates that keep your tabs. Next Term checks GitHub Releases once a day, at 11:00 or later in your time zone (or Check for Updates). A new version opens a window with what's new, and a blue Update button at the top right brings it back. It downloads and is checked against its checksum signed with the Next Term release key; the update sheet then says what happens to each tab before anything quits. After the update, or after a quit, your windows, tabs, splits and scrollback come back, Claude Code, Codex and Qwen Code resume their conversations as you started them, and other agents’ resume commands wait on the line for Return. A local OpenCode tab’s line names the session OpenCode was showing when its title matches exactly one of the folder’s sessions, so after opencode -c or a switch inside OpenCode, Return resumes the session you were in.
Native. Swift and AppKit, universal (Apple Silicon and Intel): about 33 MB to download, 71 MB installed. macOS 13 or later.

Install

In one line, from the terminal:

curl -fsSL https://nxtrm.mishuk.me/install.sh | bash

Next Term is not notarized by Apple, so with the disk image macOS blocks the first launch. Allow it once:

macOS 15 and later: open Next Term once (it will be blocked), then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down, click Open Anyway next to Next Term, and confirm.
macOS 13 and 14: right-click Next Term in Applications, choose Open, then Open again.

Each release includes NextTerm-x.y.z.dmg.sha256. Check the download with shasum -a 256 -c NextTerm-x.y.z.dmg.sha256 before allowing it.

Tab status

Mark	Meaning
none	At the prompt, a plain command running, or an agent working with View › Agent Spinner set to Off
spinner	An AI agent is working (View › Agent Spinner: Spinning, Still or Off; still in ⌘O and the window column)
green ✓	An agent stopped and is waiting for your next prompt, or a command finished: a dark ✓ on a soft green, quiet as nothing needs you yet (plain green with Increase Contrast)
amber !	An agent is waiting on your decision (the question is in the tooltip), or a program rang the bell
red ✕	A command exited with an error (the exit code is in the tooltip)

How it knows, most reliable first:

zsh integration. Next Term starts zsh with its own ZDOTDIR holding a tiny .zshenv. That file points ZDOTDIR back at your real config, loads your .zshenv, and adds preexec/precmd hooks that report each command (as typed and with aliases expanded), its exit code, the working directory and any suspended jobs. Your .zprofile, .zshrc and frameworks such as oh-my-zsh load exactly as before. A command Next Term or an agent runs by itself (MCP's new_tab and send_to_tab, a resume) stays out of zsh's history, so ↑ and autosuggestions never offer it; a line Next Term only puts on your prompt is yours once you press Return. A third hook reports the line as you edit it (what is typed, where the cursor is, and whether a plugin such as zsh-autosuggestions draws a suggestion), once no key is waiting: suggestions while typing and an agent's read_tab read it from there. Next Term's own suggestion is drawn over the terminal and never written into it; one is put on your line only through that hook, while the line is still the one it showed on.
Agents. claude, codex, commandcode, gemini and other agents stay in the foreground, so Next Term reads the agent’s own screen, the way you would: “esc to interrupt” means working, a question with choices means it is waiting on you, anything else means idle. These hints are checked against Claude Code, Codex, Command Code and Gemini CLI. OpenCode has hints of its own, read only in its tab: “esc interrupt” in its footer means working, its footer’s keys (“ctrl+p commands”) or “Ask anything…” mean idle, and its “Permission required” prompt or a question with numbered options means it is waiting on you; until its working hint first shows, output timing drives the spinner. Other agents (Junie, Qwen Code and the rest) go by output timing until their screen shows one of them: printing means working, 2.5 s of silence means done. When a command looks plain (a shell function), Next Term also asks the kernel what is really running.
Other shells. For bash and fish, or after exec bash, Next Term asks the kernel for the terminal's foreground process and working directory twice a second.

Many projects and agents

One window per project, and a few keys to move between them:

In Settings › General, leave At launch on Resume where I left off (the default), and set Projects to Open in New Window (or File › Open Projects In › New Window), so opening a project never asks.
Keep one window per repository for your own work. For an agent's task that would edit the same files, choose Open in New Worktree… on a branch (⌥⌘B): the task gets its own branch and window ("shop ▸ fix-login"). Rename the agent's tab after its task (⌥⌘R). Plain shells go in tabs (⌘T).
Press ⇧⌘U until nothing needs you. The Dock badge counts what you have not looked at yet; a question you looked at but did not answer keeps its amber mark in ⌘O.
⌘O then ↩ goes back to the window you used last; ⌘O and a few letters goes anywhere, and shows every window's agents. ⌘` moves between windows. The window column at each window's edge shows them all at once, with a dot on the one that needs you: a click on its badge goes there. If you turned it off, ⌃⇧⌘S brings it back.
View › Terminal Tabs › Left keeps tab names and marks readable; View › Project Color gives each repository its colour.
When a worktree's branch is merged, close its window with Close and Remove Worktree.

Keyboard

Action	Keys
New tab (in the project, or the current tab's folder)	⌘T
New window (where new tabs open: your home folder unless Settings › Terminal says otherwise)	⌘N
New remote tab (on one of your servers)	⌥⌘T
Switch to or open a project (the Welcome window: ↩ go there, ⌘↩ new window, ⌘1–⌘9 the first nine; ⌘O again there for any folder) / Close project	⌘O / File menu
Go to File (`name` or `name:line`)	⌘P
Go to the next agent needing you, in any window (again for the one after)	⇧⌘U
Resume an agent session (↩ resume or go to its tab, ⌘↩ fork)	⌥⌘O
Close tab (or the focused pane in a split tab)	⌘W
Split right / split down (in the editor, ⌘D duplicates the line)	⌘D / ⌘⇧D
Move between panes	⌥⌘← ⌥⌘→ ⌥⌘↑ ⌥⌘↓, or ⌥⌘] / ⌥⌘[ in turn
Go to an agent, herdr's or a tab's (in any window; type its name, or 1–9)	⌃⌘A
Peek at an agent (in Go to Agent, or on its row)	⌥
Maximize the pane (and back)	⌘⇧↩
Select tab 1–8 / last tab	⌘1…⌘8 / ⌘9
Next / previous tab	⌘⇧] / ⌘⇧[, Ctrl-Tab / Ctrl-Shift-Tab
Rename tab	⌥⌘R, or double-click the tab
Project sidebar (in a Markdown file, ⌘B is Bold)	⌘B
Fold the terminal away (and back)	⌘J
Unfold the window column in every window (and fold it)	⌃⌘S
Hide the window column in every window (and show it)	⌃⇧⌘S
Find / next / previous	⌘F / ⌘G / ⌘⇧G
Use the selection for Find	⌘E
Replace in the open file	⌥⌘F
Find in Files / Replace in Files	⌘⇧F / ⌘⇧R
Clear (in a Markdown file, ⌘K makes a link)	⌘K
Take the suggestion while typing / one word of it / hide it	→ (or End, ⌃E, ⌃F) / ⌥→ / Esc
Forget the suggestion showing (never suggested again)	⇧⌘⌫
Font size	⌘+ / ⌘- / ⌘0
Option as Meta (for Emacs-style keys)	File menu, off by default
Save / Save All	⌘S / ⌥⌘S
Close the file being edited	⌘W (with the editor focused)
Comment line / Go to line	⌘/ / ⌘L
Markdown Live Preview or its source (the Markdown file in front)	⇧⌘V
Bold / Italic / Link / Strikethrough (in a Markdown file)	⌘B / ⌘I / ⌘K / ⇧⌘X
Heading 1–6 / Body Text (in a Markdown file)	⌥⌘1…⌥⌘6 / ⌥⌘0
Toggle Task / Go to Heading (in a Markdown file)	⇧⌘L / ⇧⌘O
Soft wrap	⌥⌘W
Show a file's changes	⌥⌘G
Git Diff (the changed files and their diffs)	⌃⌘G
Branches (the branch popup)	⌥⌘B
Git Log (the commit graph)	⌥⌘L
Fetch / Update Project / Commit… / Push… / New Branch…	⌘R / ⌥⌘U / ⇧⌘C / ⌥⌘P / ⇧⌘B
Send to Agent	⌥⌘K
Add a task (to the project's destination)	⌃⌘T
Indent / Outdent	⌘] / ⌘[ (Tab / ⇧Tab on selected lines)
Between editor and terminal	⌃`
Keyboard Shortcuts (change any menu shortcut)	⌘,

Security

Privacy prompts: Next Term never reads your Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Movies, Music, ~/Library (with iCloud Drive and cloud-storage folders) or other disks on its own. The sidebar's scans, git status, Go to File, Find in Files and the checks at launch leave them out, and your home folder, /, /Volumes and ~/Library are never a project, so opening a terminal asks for nothing. A project you open inside one of them, or a folder you open in the tree, works as any other: macOS asks once, because you went there. If you said Don't Allow, the folder says macOS hasn't given Next Term access, with a button to the System Settings pane that changes it, and nothing asks again. Settings › General › Full Disk Access… opens that pane for anyone who wants every folder without prompts; Next Term never asks for it. When macOS asks, it says "Next Term, or a command running in it, wants to access…": macOS asks in Next Term's name for the programs in its tabs too, and every kind of access a program could ask for has a reason given.
Clipboard: programs can copy to the clipboard (OSC 52) only from the tab you are looking at, and can never read it, so a remote host over ssh cannot harvest what you copied. ⌘V strips control characters.
Screen contents cannot be read back through terminal queries (DECRQCRA answers are blanked).
Status marks from the shell carry a random per-tab secret that programs never see, so output (a cat of a log, a remote host) cannot fake "command finished" and skip the close confirmation.
Paths you drop, paste or insert are quoted so that no file name can run a command, even one containing control characters, and are sent as a bracketed paste.
Opening files from the sidebar or with ⌘-click asks first when the file is an app, a script or an executable, including behind a symlink or a Finder alias (cloned repos carry no quarantine flag, so Gatekeeper would not ask). Links other than http, https, mailto and local files are refused.
The MCP server listens on a Unix socket only you can open (0600, and each connection is checked to be yours), never on the network. Agents reach it through nxtrm mcp, which they start themselves. Tabs refuse input from their own agent, and a tab running something closes only when told to force it.
Suggestions while typing come from Next Term's record of the commands you ran in its zsh tabs, kept on this Mac only, in ~/Library/Application Support/Next Term/History.noindex (a folder only you can open, which Spotlight leaves out): each line, when it last ran, how often, its exit, its folder and repository, and the commands that followed it. A command Next Term or an agent ran is never recorded, nor a line that holds a secret (one of your stored keys, a token or a password), starts with a space, or spans lines, nor anything while suggestions are off or View › Private Mode is on (which lasts until you turn it off or quit). zsh's history file is never read or changed. Edit › Forget This Suggestion removes one, and Settings › Terminal › While typing › Clear History… removes them all. Agents never see Next Term's suggestion.
Secrets (the Secrets menu, and Settings › Secrets) keeps API and MCP keys in a vault on your Mac, each value sealed on disk, with the key that opens them guarded by the Secure Enclave (on a Mac without one, by the login keychain, which Settings calls less protected); the names, what each key is for, who added it, the link to its page, its settings and its dates are not encrypted. Agents use a key by name, after Next Term’s own panel shows who asks, which keys and the command, and you approve with Touch ID or your password; no MCP tool returns a value. A key’s “Ask for Touch ID every time it’s used” is ticked by default (untick it in its Edit… sheet), and while it is, a request that uses the key offers only Allow once. A key set to “Never show this key” is never shown or copied, even to you, and that can’t be undone; commands you allow still get it. The New keys group in Settings › Secrets sets how both start for the keys you add, an agent asks you for, or import. Stored keys are masked, best effort, in what agents read through Next Term. A command you approve gets the key in its environment, and for as long as it runs, any program running as you can read it there (ps -E shows it), an agent’s own shell tool included, which Next Term’s masks never see. The command can also send the key on, and Secrets can’t stop malware already running as you. Secrets › Import From leaves a file it copies keys from as it was, and changes an MCP config only once you choose the keys to move out of it. For 1Password, Bitwarden and Bitwarden Secrets Manager, Next Term types the CLI’s line into a new tab and never presses Return: you unlock 1Password or Bitwarden at its CLI’s own prompt (bws reads its access token from the tab’s environment), and the keys go by pipe, never onto the screen. After a 1Password import, close that tab to end 1Password’s authorization for it. While bw list items runs, Bitwarden’s session key is in that command’s environment, where ps -E can read it, and the line’s bw lock ends the session right after. Next Term doesn’t rotate keys through providers’ APIs: you make the new key, and delete or deactivate the old one, on the provider’s page. See Secrets.
Tasks leave the Mac only where you send them, and Next Term makes no request for them and holds no account or token: an app (Reminders, Things, a Shortcut, Todoist, OmniFocus) gets the task on this Mac, a tracker's page opens in your browser filled in and saves nothing until you submit it there, and a request to your agent is typed into its tab with no Return. What leaves is shown in the Add Task sheet, or in the approval window for an agent's add_task, before anything is sent, with stored keys as •••; team pages get the branch only, never the tab, agent or resume command. Reminders asks macOS for access only when you first choose it. A short record of what went where (masked titles, 30 days) stays in Application Support for the duplicate warning and Undo, and task text is never logged. Wrap Up and Post Update make no request either: handoffs and updates are files in your project, and today's commits are read only for your own user.email. See where tasks go and Wrap Up and Post Update.
SQLite editing: the SQLite viewer opens every file read-only (SQLite's read-only mode, query_only, and immutable when nothing is in its write-ahead log). Editing is opt-in per tab: Allow Editing… asks first, saying the file may belong to an app that is running now and naming the processes that have it open, and the allowance is bound to that file in that tab, ends when the tab closes, you click Stop Editing or the file is replaced, and is never remembered. Nothing is written until you click Save (or ⌘S, or Return in the cell): then one value is written, in one transaction on a connection of its own (SQLite's defensive mode on, so a full-text index's own tables and the schema stay read-only), by one UPDATE OR ABORT keyed by the row's rowid or primary key. It changes the cell only if the cell still holds, byte for byte and of the same type, the value that was read, and the row's other values are still the ones read, since a key alone can name another row once SQLite gives a rowid out again. OR ABORT overrides a table's own ON CONFLICT REPLACE or IGNORE, so a save never deletes another row. If anything differs, or the file is busy, nothing is written and the viewer says why. Edit › Undo writes the old value back the same checked way. A file with no -wal beside it gets none. A value typed and not saved is asked about before its tab closes; closing it with other tabs, closing its window or quitting warns first and writes nothing. Views, virtual tables and their own tables, key and generated columns and blobs can't be edited. No agent or MCP tool can allow editing or write a database.
Git: the sidebar reads status with read-only calls and --no-optional-locks, so it never holds the index lock while your own git commands run. On its own, Next Term only runs git fetch: every 10 minutes while it is the active app, and as the branch popup opens if the last fetch is over 5 minutes old. That updates remote-tracking branches and tags, never your branches, files or index, and Settings › Editor › Git turns it off. Everything else runs only when you ask: checkout, merge, rebase, commit, push, stash, the sidebar's Pull and Push, and staging a hunk. Next Term asks first when an agent is working in the folder, puts changes a switch would overwrite in a named stash, and force-pushes only with a lease on the commits it showed you, never to main, master, release/* or the default branch <remote>/HEAD names.

Build from source

Needs macOS 13+ and Swift 6 (the Xcode Command Line Tools are enough; full Xcode is not required).

git clone https://github.com/MishukAdhikari/next-term.git
cd next-term
swift run NextTerm            # run a debug build
scripts/build-dmg.sh          # universal app + DMG + checksum in dist/, and NextTerm.dSYM for crash reports

Tests

scripts/test.sh                          # unit tests: status, agents, git, files, editor, nxtrm, shortcuts, updates
python3 scripts/zsh-integration-test.py  # the shipped zsh hooks, in a real pty, with your zsh config
scripts/selftest.sh                      # end-to-end: drives the real app (opens a window)
scripts/orphan-check.sh                  # release check: what keeps running after Quit, closing tabs, Force Quit
scripts/perf-budget.sh                   # release check: CPU, drawing, git and memory budgets of a release build

Layout

Sources/NextTermCore/   platform-neutral logic, no AppKit: TabStatus, AgentScreen, CommandClassifier,
                        ShellIntegration, Git, CommitLog and CommitGraph, Diff, HunkOps, FileTree and
                        FileOps, ProjectSearch, TextFile and LineIndex, EditorLanguage, CommandLineOpen,
                        KeyChord, Updates, MCPServer, MCPProjectTools, MCPRedaction and MCPRegistrar (the
                        agent-facing MCP server, its file, search and git tools with their path and secrets
                        rules, and its registration in each agent)
Sources/NextTerm/       the macOS app: windows, tabs, sidebar, editor, projects, menus, shortcuts, updates,
                        notifications, self-test
Resources/Highlighting/ the shipped grammars (scripts/update-highlighting.py) and the Next Dark theme
Tests/                  unit tests (swift-testing)
scripts/                build, test, signing and icon scripts
docs/                   release signing (signing.md) and the todo file format (todo-files.md)

Roadmap

Credits

License

MIT. See LICENSE and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Add this server

Host a copy with our keys and logs.

Server facts

Tools

Questions

How do I install Next Term?

Does Next Term need an API key?

What transport does Next Term use?

When was Next Term last checked?

Documentation

Next Term

Install

Tab status

Many projects and agents

Keyboard

Security

Build from source

Tests

Layout

Roadmap

Credits

License

Add this server

Host a copy with our keys and logs.

Server facts

Tools

Questions

How do I install Next Term?

Does Next Term need an API key?

What transport does Next Term use?

When was Next Term last checked?

Documentation

Next Term

Install

Tab status

Many projects and agents

Keyboard

Security

Build from source

Tests

Layout

Roadmap

Credits

License