A personal Mac terminal emulator built for terminal-based AI work. Written in Rust, GPU-accelerated via Metal (wgpu), with just enough features to get the job done and nothing more.

curl -fsSL https://github.com/cartermp/term/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash

Downloads the latest Term.app from GitHub Releases, installs it to /Applications, and symlinks term, tcat, tdiff, and tjson into /usr/local/bin. Pin a version with TERM_VERSION=v1.0.0 curl ....

Requires Rust (install via rustup):

git clone https://github.com/cartermp/term
cd term
./install.sh

Builds a release binary, assembles Term.app (including generating AppIcon.icns from assets/icon.svg), installs it to /Applications, and symlinks term into /usr/local/bin.

cargo build --release
cargo run --release

Builds four binaries: term, tcat, tdiff, tjson. No external tools or scripts needed.

cargo build --all-targets
cargo test
./scripts/manual-smoke.sh

Automated coverage includes inline unit tests, subprocess integration tests for tcat / tdiff / tjson, and property-style terminal tests that stress arbitrary byte streams plus mixed write/resize/scroll action sequences.

./scripts/manual-smoke.sh creates a temporary fixture workspace with a sample Rust file, JSON fixture, URL fixture, and git diff, prints a macOS smoke checklist, then launches term in that workspace. Set TERM_SMOKE_NO_LAUNCH=1 if you only want the workspace and checklist.

• GPU-accelerated rendering — wgpu/Metal pipeline with batched instancing and a 1024×1024 glyph atlas
• JetBrains Mono — bundled font, no system font dependency
• Catppuccin Mocha color theme throughout
• True-color support — ANSI 8/16, 256-color, and 24-bit RGB
• Multiple tabs — Cmd+T/W to open/close, Cmd+[/] or Cmd+1–9 to navigate, drag to reorder
• Native self-updates — Term -> Check for Updates... compares the running build against the latest GitHub release and installs it in place when a newer app bundle is available
• Native background controls — Appearance -> Background... opens the macOS color panel with an alpha slider for live background color/opacity changes
• Scrollback — 10,000-line buffer; scroll with mouse wheel, Cmd+Up/Down, Cmd+Home/End
• Clipboard — Cmd+C copies selection (text), Cmd+V pastes (text or image path); OSC 52 supported
• URL detection — hold Cmd to underline URLs; Cmd+click opens in browser
• Inline history — ghost-text completion from ~/.zsh_history; accept with Cmd+Right or →
• Alternate screen buffer — vim, htop, etc. work correctly with ?1049h
• Block characters — 40+ Unicode block/Braille chars rendered as precise fill rectangles
• Syntax-highlighted cat — cat is aliased to tcat, which highlights files via syntect
• Syntax-highlighted diffs — tdiff is set as GIT_PAGER, so git diff, git show, and git log -p all render with color and line-level highlights
• JSON prettifier — json pnpm dev (or any command) runs it in a PTY so it sees a real terminal, then pretty-prints any JSON log lines while passing everything else through
• Shell integration — ZLE hooks report the input buffer and cursor position live; chpwd reports the working directory for dynamic tab titles; mistyped commands show the top 3 likely matches
• Blinking cursor — narrow 2px vertical bar, blinks at ~530 ms, resets on input
• zsh with your real ~/.zshrc and ~/.zshenv sourced automatically

tcat src/main.rs          # whole file
tcat src/main.rs:40-70    # lines 40–70
tcat src/main.rs:42       # single line

Shows a header with file name, language, and directory. The cat alias in term's shell uses tcat automatically for single-file invocations.

git diff          # uses tdiff automatically via GIT_PAGER
git show HEAD
git log -p

Highlights added/removed lines with green/red tints and syntax-colors the code content.

json pnpm dev             # PTY mode: pnpm dev sees a real terminal
json node server.js       # any command that emits JSON log lines
some-cmd | json           # filter mode: reads stdin

Lines that parse as JSON objects or arrays are pretty-printed with syntax color. All other output passes through unchanged. PTY mode is preferred for servers (like Next.js) that suppress their startup output when stdout is not a terminal.

• No mouse reporting protocols (programs can't receive click/drag events)
• No sixel or kitty image protocols
• No search in scrollback
• No split panes
• No custom keybinding config
• No ligatures or double-width characters
• Bold uses the same font face (no separate bold variant loaded)