Product roadmap

Strategy in one sentence

Unterm is a terminal that agents can drive and that shows you what the agents inside it are doing — local-first, MCP-driven, and vendor-neutral.

Most of what follows is terminal groundwork: the protocols modern command-line tools expect, and the install and update paths people expect from a daily driver. The agent surface (MCP, CLI, Agent Cockpit) already ships; see the MCP reference and Agent Cockpit.

Shipped in v0.71.18

Pictures

• Inline images — the kitty graphics protocol, iTerm2’s inline images (OSC 1337 File=, and its multipart form) and sixel. Pictures scroll with their text, stay in the scrollback, are clipped at pane edges and keep to the screen they were drawn on. Programs that ask for the cell size in pixels get the real one. Agents list them with screen.images. See Inline images.

Configuration

• [platform.*] sections apply; [window] close_confirmation works; path_append and [env] reach shells a Core starts on its own; settings that do nothing are reported with the reason.

Shipped in v0.71.17

Terminal protocols

• Kitty keyboard protocol (the “disambiguate” level, which is what agents and modern TUIs ask for) and xterm’s modifyOtherKeys: Shift+Enter, Esc and Ctrl/Alt chords reach the program as themselves. Unterm answers the protocol’s query with exactly the levels it implements.
• Synchronized output (mode 2026): an update is shown whole or not at all, for at most 150 ms, so full-screen redraws stop tearing.
• Colour queries (OSC 4, 10, 11, 12) answered from the theme the window is drawing, and XTVERSION.
• OSC 9;4 progress, drawn as a bar under the tab in the sidebar.
• Shell integration, injected automatically into zsh, bash, fish and PowerShell: prompt and command marks with exit codes, so a failed command marks its tab. See Shell integration.

Windows

• Git Bash found wherever Git is installed, and each WSL distribution listed by name in the shell menu.

Install and update

• In-app updates: unterm-cli update, the command palette’s Install update, and Web Settings download, verify and install the new release, then restart Unterm. See update.
• Homebrew and Scoop: brew install --cask zhitongblog/tap/unterm, scoop bucket add zhitongblog https://github.com/zhitongblog/scoop-bucket then scoop install unterm. winget (zhitongblog.Unterm) is submitted and listed once Microsoft accepts it.
• Crash reports via a pre-filled GitHub issue: nothing is sent unless you submit it yourself.

Later

• SSH sessions — remote panes that Unterm knows are remote, rather than a local ssh process.
• Screen-reader accessibility.

What we are not doing

• No cloud AI subscription, account, or login.
• No chat panel inside the terminal. The agents you already use stay outside and drive it.
• No telemetry.

Progress is tracked in the changelog and on GitHub.