thane

The AI-native terminal workspace manager.

thane combines a terminal emulator, embedded browser, and rich metadata sidebar into project-centric workspaces — designed from the ground up for AI coding agents.

Website | Documentation | Features

Why thane?

AI coding agents need more than a plain terminal. thane gives them — and you — a structured workspace with:

• Multi-workspace terminal with split panes and vim-style navigation
• Embedded browser with JavaScript scripting and Vimium-style keyboard nav
• Agent monitoring — activity detection, cost tracking, token usage per workspace
• Agent queue — submit tasks for headless execution, monitor progress
• Sandbox mode — Landlock + seccomp isolation per workspace
• JSON-RPC socket API — full programmatic control for AI agents
• Session persistence — pick up where you left off across restarts
• Notifications with desktop integration and per-workspace history
• Audit log — track security events with severity filtering
• Git diff viewer — inline diffs per pane, no context switching
• Ghostty-compatible config format
• Leader key mode (tmux-style Ctrl+B prefix)

Platforms

Platform	Stack	Status
Linux	GTK4 + VTE + WebKitGTK	Available
macOS	AppKit + SwiftTerm + WKWebView	Available

Install

Linux

curl -fsSL https://getthane.com/install.sh | bash

Or build from source:

# Install system dependencies (Ubuntu/Debian)
sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev libvte-2.91-gtk4-dev libwebkitgtk-6.0-dev

# Fedora
sudo dnf install gtk4-devel vte291-gtk4-devel webkitgtk6.0-devel

# Build
cargo build --release

# Install
sudo install -Dm755 target/release/thane /usr/local/bin/thane
sudo install -Dm755 target/release/thane-cli /usr/local/bin/thane-cli

macOS

Download the latest .dmg from getthane.com.

Or build from source:

# Build the Rust bridge and CLI
cargo build --release -p thane-bridge -p thane-cli

# Build the Swift app (requires Xcode 15+, macOS 13+)
cd frontends/macos && swift build -c release

Usage

# Launch thane
thane

# Control a running instance via CLI
thane-cli ping
thane-cli workspace list
thane-cli workspace create --title "My Project" --cwd ~/projects/myapp
thane-cli surface split-right
thane-cli browser open https://localhost:3000

Configuration

thane reads Ghostty-format config files:

1. ~/.config/ghostty/config (Ghostty compatibility)
2. ~/.config/thane/config (overrides)

# ~/.config/thane/config
font-family = JetBrains Mono
font-size = 14
scrollback-limit = 50000

Socket API

thane exposes a JSON-RPC 2.0 API over a Unix domain socket. AI agents running inside thane can use it to create workspaces, send notifications, split panes, and more.

Environment variables available in spawned shells:

• THANE_WORKSPACE_ID — current workspace UUID
• THANE_SURFACE_ID — current pane UUID
• THANE_SOCKET_PATH — path to the socket

# Example: send a notification from an agent
echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"notification.send","params":{"title":"Build","body":"Tests passed"},"id":1}' \
  | socat - UNIX-CONNECT:$THANE_SOCKET_PATH

Architecture

All business logic lives in platform-agnostic Rust crates. Platform-specific code is isolated to thane-gtk (Linux) and thane-bridge + frontends/macos (macOS).

crates/
├── thane-core       # Workspaces, sandbox, audit, agent queue, config, git
├── thane-rpc        # JSON-RPC method dispatch
├── thane-ipc        # Unix socket server
├── thane-persist    # Session save/restore, audit store, queue history
├── thane-platform   # Platform dirs, notifications, Landlock, seccomp
├── thane-terminal   # Terminal surface trait + VTE backend
├── thane-browser    # Browser surface trait + WebKit backend
├── thane-gtk        # Linux frontend (GTK4 + VTE + WebKitGTK)
├── thane-cli        # CLI client
└── thane-bridge     # macOS FFI bridge (UniFFI → Swift)

frontends/
└── macos/           # Swift/AppKit frontend

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+Shift+T	New workspace
Ctrl+Shift+D	Split right
Ctrl+Shift+E	Split down
Alt+H/J/K/L	Focus pane (vim-style)
Ctrl+Shift+Z	Toggle pane zoom
Ctrl+B	Enter leader mode
Ctrl+,	Settings
Ctrl+Shift+F	Find in terminal
Ctrl+Shift+G	Git diff
Ctrl+Shift+B	Toggle sidebar
F1	Help (full shortcut reference)

See the in-app Help panel (F1) for the complete list.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Building from source

# System dependencies (Ubuntu/Debian)
sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev libvte-2.91-gtk4-dev libwebkitgtk-6.0-dev

# Build
cargo build

# Run tests
cargo test

# Run
cargo run

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE for the full text.

Commercial licensing is available — contact us at getthane.com.