I built Shelly because I wanted a terminal that just... gets out of the way. No giant windows, no massive memory footprint. Just a tiny "notch" pill at the top of your screen that springs open when you need it, and hides when you don't.
It handles multi-session tabs, detects your IDE projects, looks great with custom themes, and tracks your Claude Code status right from the notch. Oh, and the whole thing is roughly a 5 MB download. Available for both MacOS and Windows.
A little backstory: The original Shelly was a tiny WPF app I built just for Windows (inspired by Notchy). I missed having it on my Mac, so I rewrote the whole thing from the ground up to be cross-platform while keeping the footprint incredibly small.
Bloat is the enemy. The entire install—binary, assets, everything—is around 5 MB. It launches instantly and won't hog your RAM while sitting in the background.
- Always there, never in the way: It’s a floating terminal toggled by a global hotkey (default is Ctrl+`).
- The Pill: A tiny notch that lives at the top (or bottom) of your screen. It hugs the physical notch on Mac and respects Windows DPI scaling.
- Smooth UX: Springy grow/shrink animations, adjustable transparency, and the option to pin it open or let it hide automatically when you click away.
- Multi-session: The usual suspects work perfectly (Ctrl+T, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+Tab).
- Color coding: Right-click a tab to give it a color. The best part? Shelly remembers that color the next time you open that specific folder.
- Smart tabs: Duplicate folders get an auto-tinted strip so you don't get lost. You can rename tabs manually, or just let Shelly capitalize the folder name for you.
- Persistence: Close the app, and your last-active tab will auto-resume right where you left off when you restart.
- Auto-detects your shell: PowerShell, cmd, bash, zsh, WSL—it knows what you're running.
- Drag & Drop: Drag a folder in to start a new session, or drop a file to instantly paste its quoted path.
- Live PTY: Smooth, live terminal resizing as you drag the panel around.
This is the killer feature for my workflow. If you use Claude Code, Shelly acts as a smart companion:
- Live Status: The notch gives you visual indicators if Claude is Idle, Working, Waiting, Completed, or Interrupted.
- Attention Flow: If an agent needs your input, the panel automatically pops open. Once you're done, it gets out of your way again.
- Auto-run: Open a folder with a
CLAUDE.mdfile, and Shelly can automatically fire upclaude --continue. - IDE Context: It detects what you're working on by reading VS Code and JetBrains window titles.
- No sleeping on the job: Shelly prevents your computer from going to sleep while a session is actively working.
- Comes with 33 bundled themes.
- Already have a favorite VS Code theme? Just paste the JSON or URL to import it.
- Live font size and family adjustments, plus optional hint overlays.
No bloated installers here. Just grab the latest ~5 MB release for your OS from the Releases page and you're good to go.
Want to tinker? You'll need Rust, Bun, and your OS's Tauri prerequisites.
bun install
bun run tauri dev # Dev mode (Vite runs on :1420)
bun run tauri build # Build the production bundle
bun run build # Frontend-only check (tsc + Vite)I kept the stack modern and fast:
- Frontend: React 19 + TypeScript + xterm.js
- Backend: Rust + Tauri v2 + portable-pty
(If you want to geek out on the architecture, check out the full breakdown in CLAUDE.md).
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Show / Hide | Ctrl+` (Configurable) |
| New Session | Ctrl+T |
| Close Session | Ctrl+W |
| Cycle Tabs | Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab |
License: MIT