[Bug] Terminal PTY sessions missing TERM, COLORTERM, and LANG when hub is started via launchd/systemd/Docker

[GeT-LeFt]

Description

When the hub process is started via launchd (macOS), systemd (Linux), or Docker, the spawned terminal PTY sessions inherit a stripped-down environment that is missing critical terminal variables.

Expected behavior

Terminal sessions should have sensible defaults for TERM, COLORTERM, and LANG so that colors, cursor movement, and Unicode rendering work out of the box.

Actual behavior

Variable	Missing behavior
TERM	Programs fall back to dumb mode — no colors, no cursor movement
COLORTERM	Shell prompts (e.g. Powerlevel10k) skip truecolor output
LANG	Non-ASCII glyphs (powerline symbols, emoji, CJK characters) render as replacement characters �

Steps to reproduce

1. Start the hub via Docker or launchd (not from an interactive terminal)
2. Open a terminal session in the web UI
3. Observe broken colors, missing glyphs, and degraded prompt rendering

Environment

• macOS (launchd) and Linux (Docker/systemd)
• Shell: zsh with oh-my-zsh / Powerlevel10k

Fix

PR #495 adds defaults (xterm-256color, truecolor, en_US.UTF-8) only when not already set.

[github-actions]

This matches the current implementation.

Terminal PTY sessions are created on the CLI side, and the spawned shell inherits a filtered copy of process.env. I did not find any fallback defaults for TERM, COLORTERM, or LANG, so if the parent process starts with a stripped environment, the terminal session will inherit that stripped environment as well.

Relevant code:

• cli/src/terminal/TerminalManager.ts:60 - buildFilteredEnv() copies the current process environment and only removes a small set of sensitive keys.
• cli/src/terminal/TerminalManager.ts:129 - Bun.spawn([shell], { env: this.filteredEnv, ... }) starts the PTY shell with that inherited environment.
• cli/src/api/apiSession.ts:126 - terminal lifecycle is wired through TerminalManager for session-scoped CLI connections.
• shared/src/socket.ts:6 - terminal open payload contains sessionId, terminalId, cols, and rows; no terminal env override is defined here.
• hub/src/socket/handlers/terminal.ts:130 - hub forwards terminal open events to the CLI; it does not inject terminal env defaults in this path.

So based on the current code, the reported behavior is expected when HAPI is launched by launchd, systemd, or Docker with minimal environment variables.

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HAPI Bot