fluxtty

A vim-modal terminal for AI development.

A keyboard-driven terminal workspace with vim-modal input — built for developers supervising many concurrent AI agents.
Navigate panes with hjkl, send commands in Insert mode, dispatch to your workspace AI — all without touching the mouse.

Live demo and landing page →

demo_2x.mp4

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Table of Contents

• Installation
• The Problem
• Features
• Configuration
• Keybindings
• Contributing

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Installation

Download

→ Download latest release

Platform	File
🍎 macOS (Apple Silicon)	fluxtty_*_aarch64.dmg
🍎 macOS (Intel)	fluxtty_*_x64.dmg
🐧 Linux	fluxtty_*_amd64.deb · .rpm · .AppImage
🪟 Windows	fluxtty_*_x64-setup.exe

macOS — first launch

macOS will block the app on first open because it is not notarized. Run this once after installing:

sudo xattr -cr /Applications/fluxtty.app

Then open normally from Finder or Spotlight.

Build from source

Prerequisites: Rust 1.77+, Node.js 18+, Tauri v2 prerequisites

git clone https://github.com/wangzewang/fluxtty
cd fluxtty
npm install
npm run tauri build

Built app is in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

npm run tauri dev   # development

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The Problem

Modern AI-assisted development looks different from traditional coding. You have multiple claude sessions running in parallel, dev servers, test runners, database shells, and CI watchers all running at once. Your job is to supervise them — review outputs, redirect agents, intervene when things go wrong.

The usual terminal workflow breaks down here. Alt-tabbing between windows is disorienting at scale. tmux panes get too small to be useful. The mouse is slow.

fluxtty applies vim's modal philosophy to this problem: a persistent view of all your terminals, and a modal input bar that knows the difference between navigating (hjkl), typing into a shell (i), and talking to your workspace AI (a). One window. Keyboard-first.

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Features

🗂️ Waterfall layout

Terminal rows stack vertically; each row fills the viewport. Horizontal splits live within a row. Row heights recalculate on resize and sidebar toggle — always fills the screen.

⌨️ Modal input bar

The input bar sits at the bottom, always visible. Four modes modeled after vim:

Mode	Key	What keystrokes do
Normal	default	Navigate panes with hjkl, scroll output, open commands
Insert	i	Send keystrokes directly to the active shell
AI	a	Dispatch to the Workspace AI in natural language
Terminal	Ctrl+\	Raw PTY — xterm owns the keyboard (TUI apps, vim, etc.)
Pane Selector	/	Fuzzy-search over all open panes

✨ Workspace AI

Press a to enter AI mode. Supports Claude, GPT, Gemini, Ollama, or a built-in regex parser with no model at all.

run <cmd> in <session>        new [name] [in <group>]
<cmd> in all sessions         rename <session> to <name>
run X then Y in <session>     close <session> | close idle

Multi-step and broadcast actions show a plan preview and wait for y before executing.

👁️ Agent detection & auto-naming

Panes detect running agents (claude, codex, aider) from PTY output and show an agent badge. Tab in Insert mode completes that agent's slash commands.

Pane names auto-update from cwd on spawn, then change to reflect what's running — claude, cargo test, psql, ssh: prod. Manual renames are pinned.

🗃️ Session sidebar

Ctrl+B opens a grouped session tree with running/idle/error indicators. Click to jump to any pane.

⚙️ Settings & config

Ctrl+, opens a settings panel (font, colors, keybindings, AI provider, terminal behaviour). All settings live in ~/.config/fluxtty/config.yaml and hot-reload on save — no restart needed.

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Configuration

# ~/.config/fluxtty/config.yaml

font:
  family: "JetBrains Mono"
  size: 13.0

colors:
  primary:
    background: "#0d1117"
    foreground: "#e6edf3"
  normal:
    black: "#484f58"  red: "#ff7b72"  green: "#3fb950"  yellow: "#d29922"
    blue:  "#388bfd"  magenta: "#bc8cff"  cyan: "#39c5cf"  white: "#b1bac4"
  # theme: catppuccin-mocha | gruvbox-dark | solarized-dark

cursor:
  style: Block      # Block | Underline | Bar
  blinking: true

input:
  live_typing: false   # true: each keystroke forwarded immediately

workspace_ai:
  model: none          # none | claude-sonnet-4-6 | gpt-4o | gemini-2.0-flash | ollama/llama3
                       # claude-cli: uses your Claude Code login, no API key needed
  api_key_env: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
  always_confirm_broadcast: true
  always_confirm_multi_step: true

waterfall:
  row_height_mode: viewport   # viewport | fixed
  new_pane_focus: true

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Keybindings

All bindings are configurable in config.yaml.

Essential — Normal mode

Key	Action
i	Insert mode — type into the active shell
a	AI mode — dispatch to Workspace AI
h j k l	Navigate panes and rows
n / s	New terminal / split row
q	Close active pane
/	Fuzzy pane search
r	Rename pane
b	Toggle sidebar
gg / G	Scroll to top / bottom
Ctrl+D / Ctrl+U	Scroll half page

Global

Key	Action
Ctrl+\	Toggle Normal ↔ Terminal (raw PTY)
Ctrl+N	New terminal
Ctrl+H	Split row
Ctrl+B	Toggle sidebar
Ctrl+,	Settings
Ctrl+Shift+C / V	Copy / Paste
Ctrl++ / Ctrl+- / Ctrl+0	Font size
Ctrl+Q	Quit

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Contributing

Read CLAUDE.md before opening a pull request — it covers the core design decisions (layout model, modal input system, Workspace AI scope) that should be understood before making significant changes.

Built with: Tauri 2 · xterm.js 5 · portable-pty · Rust + Tokio · Vanilla TypeScript + Vite

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License

MIT