nodeterm

nodeterm

A node-based terminal manager — your terminals and agents on an infinite canvas.

Multiple real terminals live as draggable nodes on a single pan/zoom canvas, and every project doubles as a Trello-style board of live Claude Code sessions. Built for people with ADHD and scattered workflows: a spatial layout instead of a stack of hidden tabs.

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Download · Docs · Features · Build from source · Architecture · Sponsor · License

_{▶ Watch the 30-second tour with sound}

Why nodeterm

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

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

✨ Features

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

Node kinds

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

More

• Session continuity (tmux) — terminals keep running across node remounts and full app restarts, including live processes; machine reboots restore scrollback and resume agent sessions (claude --resume). The macOS app ships its own tmux, so this works with nothing installed; a tmux already on your system is always used in preference to it, and terminals opened before an upgrade stay as they were until you refresh the node.
• Agent superpowers — context links so agent nodes read each other's transcripts on demand; Claude-only branch a conversation and managed accounts for several logged-in Claude identities side by side; agents can drive the canvas (open nodes, spawn teams, verify each other's work) via the built-in canvas-control CLI.
• Remote / SSH projects — open a project on a remote host over SSH; terminals, files, git, and even the board run there while the canvas stays local.
• Source control — VS Code-style stage/unstage, discard, branch switch/create, commit, push/sync/publish, worktrees, and gh sign-in — backed by system git.
• GitHub Issues on Kanban – opt-in issue cards, exact label-to-column mapping, All / GitHub / Sessions filtering, and two-way move, close, and reopen sync. See setup and security details.
• AI commit messages & terminal names — bring-your-own local agent CLI run read-only on the staged diff or captured output.
• Your sessions, in your pocket — nodeterm mobile (iOS) attaches to the same live tmux sessions: watch an agent work, answer a "needs you", or type into any terminal from your phone — plus push notifications and a mobile board view.
• Power & sleep — while an agent is working, nodeterm keeps the machine from idle-sleeping, and lets go the moment it finishes (on by default; toggle in the setup tour or Settings → Behavior). It lets the machine sleep anyway on battery below 5% or when the machine runs critically hot. No app can hold a machine awake through a closed lid (a Mac with the lid closed stays awake only while plugged in with an external display) — for overnight runs keep the laptop open and plugged in, or run the agents on a box that doesn't sleep via the Server Edition.
• Command palette (⌘K), file explorer (⌘⇧E), markdown view (⌘M), undo/redo, and a native macOS dark UI.
• Auto-update & in-app announcements — the app checks a self-hosted feed and surfaces a "Restart to update" banner and product news.

🌍 Server Edition — nodeterm in your browser

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

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

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

🔔 Get push notifications from any SSH host

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

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

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

📦 Download

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

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

  brew install --cask nodeterm
  

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

• Linux (x64) — self-updating AppImage, a .deb for Debian/Ubuntu (sudo apt install ./node-terminal_*.deb), or an .rpm for Fedora/RHEL (sudo dnf install ./node-terminal-*.rpm). Updates are manual for both packages: the app tells you when a new version is out and links the download. The AppImage needs FUSE 2, which Fedora does not install by default: sudo dnf install fuse-libs if it exits with a libfuse.so.2 error.

• Windows (x64) — beta — nodeterm-Setup-<version>.exe (per-user installer) or a portable -win.zip. Early support, so know what you are getting: the installer is unsigned (SmartScreen will ask — More info → Run anyway), updates are manual for now (the app tells you when a new version is out and links the download), and session continuity across restarts is still landing — Windows has no tmux, so the standalone session host that replaces it is being packaged in #579. Everything else — canvas, agents, kanban, hooks — is the same app. Please report what breaks.

• iOS — nodeterm mobile on the App Store.

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

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

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

Sponsor

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

0 of 10 spots taken · Become a Founding Sponsor →

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

🛠 Build from source

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

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

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

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

⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts

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