agwinterm

A native Windows terminal built for AI coding agents.

Workspaces, sessions, splits, live agent-status, a scriptable control API, full screen-reader accessibility, and OS default-terminal integration — in a fast, custom-drawn Win32 + Direct2D shell. A Windows homage to umputun's agterm.

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💜 Kudos to umputun and agterm

agwinterm exists because of umputun and his terminal agterm. agterm's design — a terminal that treats AI coding agents as first-class citizens, with per-session status, a sidebar of workspaces, a quick terminal, and a language-agnostic control socket — is the blueprint this project follows on Windows.

This is an independent, from-scratch implementation written in C# on a native Win32/Direct2D stack (agterm is Swift on libghostty); no agterm code is used. It is a tribute and a port of the ideas/UX, built so Windows users can have the same agent-first workflow. If you're on macOS, go use the real thing: github.com/umputun/agterm. Thank you, umputun. 🙏

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Highlights

Agent-first

• Workspaces → sessions → panes in a custom-drawn sidebar (drag-reorder, rename, flag, focus, unread badges, multi-select with Ctrl/Shift+click for batch flag / move / close, reopen closed sessions and workspaces with Ctrl+Shift+R).
• Dashboard (Ctrl+Shift+D): a grid of live session previews — arrow-navigate, Enter or double-click to jump in; or drive it with agwintermctl dashboard <ids>.
• Agent status per session (idle / active / blocked / completed) as a colored dot + title-bar bell — driven by your agent via hooks or the control API, with blink, auto-reset, and sounds. Run agwintermctl install hooks (or the palette entry) once to wire Claude Code / Codex up.
• Claude Code session binding & auto-resume: the same installer adds a transparent claude wrapper (active only inside agwinterm) that ties Claude's session id to the agwinterm pane. You just type claude — a fresh pane starts a bound session, and a pane that already has a transcript resumes it. On restart, agwinterm re-launches each bound pane and the conversation comes back — no guessing which shell was which. Already had Claude running before installing this? Run agwintermctl claude adopt (or palette → Make Claude Sessions Resumable) once to bind your existing conversations to their panes.
• Update Claude Code (palette → Update Claude Code, or agwintermctl claude update): agwinterm quietly notices when a new Claude Code ships (npm registry; claude-update-check = false to opt out), then — on your command — runs claude update in an overlay terminal and restarts every running Claude session, each resuming its own conversation (YOLO panes stay YOLO).
• agwinterm self-update (palette → Update agwinterm, or agwintermctl app update): notices new releases on GitHub (update-check = false to opt out), then — on your command — downloads the right artifact for your install (installer or portable exe), verifies its SHA-256 against the release digest, restarts, and your sessions restore. scoop/chocolatey installs are never touched — the hint points at your package manager instead.
• Shells that survive the UI (EXPERIMENTAL): flip Settings → General → Session host to Pty-host server (session-host = server) and your sessions live in a tiny headless process — quit, self-update, or even crash the UI and every shell (including a running Claude conversation) keeps running; the next start reattaches each pane to its live session, same process, same state. Closing a pane still closes its shell. The tmux idea, native on Windows.
• A scriptable control API: agwintermctl (or newline-JSON over a named pipe) — any language can drive it, including full read-back (tree with split ratios + pane ids, window state, session output). Opt-in installers for the agent skill and Claude Code / Codex status hooks.
• Splits (a split collapses to the survivor when a pane exits), scratch & quick terminals, ephemeral overlays (open/resize/close via API), multi-window with per-window addressing.

A real Windows terminal

• Default Terminal Application: register agwinterm from Settings → General (per-user, no admin, one-click revert) and every console app you launch — cmd from Win+R, double-clicked .exes — opens as an agwinterm session via the ConPTY handoff, titled by the app.
• Fast: sustained output at ~33k lines/s (~87 % of a bare conhost window), 0.4 s cold start, ~0 % idle CPU, and a leak-hunted session lifecycle (tools/profile-memory.ps1 keeps it honest).
• Sixel + Kitty graphics, win32-input-mode + Kitty keyboard protocol, ligatures (toggleable), builtin box-drawing glyphs, buffer restore, block selection + keyboard mark mode, read-only panes, elevated & de-elevated sessions side by side (⚡ marker), FTCS/OSC-133 prompt marks with jump-to-prompt, taskbar progress (OSC 9;4).
• Shells are launched with TERM_PROGRAM=agwinterm (+ the usual AGWINTERM_* vars), so prompt engines, tmux and scripts can detect the host terminal.

Accessible — screen readers are first-class

• The terminal is a UIA text document: Narrator/NVDA read it line by line, track the caret (tight one-cell focus box), and new output is announced automatically after it settles.
• Everything is in the UIA tree: sessions, every chrome button, settings tabs and controls — scannable (Caps Lock + arrows), focusable, and invokable. Dialogs are modally scoped so the reader can't wander behind them.
• F6 moves keyboard focus between the terminal and the session list (arrows + Enter there); the Settings dialog is fully keyboard-navigable — Tab reaches the tab headers too (Enter switches), with a classic keyboard-only dotted focus rectangle; buttons speak on hover and show tooltips.
• F1 help lists the effective keybindings and — when a reader is attached — speaks a spoken orientation guide for low-vision users.

Looks & feel

• Whole-window theming with ~580 bundled themes (the ghostty / iTerm2 set) — sidebar, title bar, and terminal retint together. Fonts apply live from Settings, and there's an optional follow Windows light/dark mode that swaps between a light and a dark theme you choose.
• Configurable sidebar font size, sidebar tint, window opacity, and inactive-pane muting.
• cwd in the title out of the box (composes with oh-my-posh) + an oh-my-posh theme picker.
• Toolbar modes (normal / compact / hidden full-bleed), window opacity, unfocused dim, per-session background watermarks.
• MRU Ctrl+Tab switcher, fuzzy command / session / action palettes, search, tmux-style leader chords, custom commands with {AGW_*} tokens and run modes.

Install

Grab either from the Releases page:

• agwinterm-setup-<version>.exe — per-user installer (Start-menu shortcut + uninstaller).
• agwinterm-portable-<version>-win-x64.exe — portable: a single self-contained exe, no installation — run it from anywhere (settings still live under %LOCALAPPDATA%\agwinterm).

Both are self-contained (no .NET runtime needed) and need no admin rights.

Or install from a package manager (both use the release artifacts and self-update on new releases):

# Scoop (portable build)
scoop bucket add agwinterm https://github.com/yeroo/scoop-bucket
scoop install agwinterm

# winget
winget install yeroo.agwinterm

# Chocolatey (portable build)
choco install agwinterm

• Binaries are currently unsigned, so SmartScreen will warn on first run → More info → Run anyway. Release artifacts carry Sigstore build-provenance attestations — verify with gh attestation verify <file> --repo yeroo/agwinterm.
• The installer is deliberately minimal (copies files + shortcuts). The integrations (put agwintermctl on PATH, agent status hooks, agent skill, shell integration, default-terminal registration) are opt-in from inside the app — command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) or Settings.

Build from source

Requires the .NET 10 SDK (see global.json) on Windows x64.

# build + test
dotnet build Agwinterm.slnx -c Release
dotnet test  Agwinterm.slnx -c Release

# run the app
dotnet run --project src/Agwinterm.Win32 -c Release

# build the installer (needs Inno Setup 6)
./installer/build.ps1

# build the portable single-file exe (no Inno Setup needed)
./installer/build-portable.ps1

Dev builds run side-by-side with the installed release

A Debug build uses a separate instance identity, agwinterm-dev, so it keeps its own data dir (%LOCALAPPDATA%\agwinterm-dev: config, sessions, keymap, themes) and its own control pipe — it never touches, or fights over the pipe with, your installed Release (agwinterm). So you can daily-drive the release and run dev builds at the same time.

dotnet run --project src/Agwinterm.Win32           # Debug -> the "agwinterm-dev" instance
agwintermctl --pipe agwinterm-dev tree             # drive the dev instance from outside
agwintermctl tree                                  # (default pipe) drives the release

Inside any session, AGWINTERM_PIPE is already set, so a bare agwintermctl auto-targets the instance it's running in. Force a specific identity with --app-id <name> or AGWINTERM_APP_ID (handy for a second throwaway instance). Dev builds also skip registering as the default-terminal COM server, so they never intercept the release's console handoffs.

Control it from anything (agwintermctl)

agwinterm is scriptable through a local named pipe speaking newline-delimited JSON, with agwintermctl as the CLI wrapper. A few examples:

agwintermctl tree --json                     # workspace/session tree (+ splits, badges, overlays)
agwintermctl window state                    # sidebar/fullscreen/active read-back
agwintermctl session status blocked --sound  # report agent status (a dot + bell in the UI)
agwintermctl session new --name build --workspace-name CI --create-workspace
agwintermctl session type "npm test`n"       # type into the active session
agwintermctl session overlay open "git diff" --size-percent 60
agwintermctl dashboard build test deploy     # grid overview of chosen sessions
agwintermctl theme set "Tokyo Night"         # retint the whole window
agwintermctl window new --name scratchpad    # open a second window

Inside a session you get AGWINTERM_SESSION_ID, AGWINTERM_WINDOW_ID, and AGWINTERM_PIPE. Run agwintermctl install skill (or the palette entry) to teach Claude Code / Codex the full verb set.

agwinterm-lite — the tiny client

agwinterm-lite is a second, minimal client for old or low-RAM machines: a single small C++ exe (Win32/WTL, no .NET) over the same Rust emulator core and pty-host. It trades the custom-drawn chrome for real native controls — menu bar, toolbar, TreeView sidebar, status bar — in the classic Windows look.

• Themes: Dark / Light / Classic / Auto (follows Windows) from File → Properties. Dark covers everything — menus, toolbar, sidebar, dialogs, scrollbars, title bar. Classic keeps the authentic raised-3D, pre-theme look.
• Agent workflow: per-session agent status (bold = blocked, italic = working), an attention bell that lights amber and jumps to the next blocked session, flagged sessions with a flagged-only view, unread badges (commands finished while a session was off-screen), workspace focus, sidebar drag & drop.
• Terminals: workspaces + sessions with restore, a 2-pane split, quick / scratch / overlay popup terminals, font catalog (incl. bundled Cozette, Tamzen, Terminus, Spleen, UNSCII & GNU Unifont bitmap fonts) — face and size are chosen once in Properties; there is deliberately no zoom, because a raster face only exists at the strike sizes its pack ships, MS-DOS/EGA palette, cmd.exe-style Properties dialog, fully rebindable keys (all unbound by default — keystrokes belong to your shell).
• Scriptable: the same newline-JSON control pipe, speaking the agwintermctl dialect — 38 verbs covering sessions, workspaces, windows, and the tree (agwintermctl --pipe agwinterm-lite tree). Shells get AGWINTERM_* env, so hooks and the agent skill work.
• Multi-window, the lite way: every window is its own tiny process (--pipe <name>), all sharing one pty-host; agwintermctl window new/list/select/... drives them.
• CLI: -p/--profile, -d/--dir, --maximized, --no-restore, --pipe — the full app's flag names — plus --diagnose (see below).
• Explains itself: lite keeps a small always-on log of its own decisions — session saves and restores (with counts, byte totals, and the exact error when a write fails), focus handoffs, and font/pack resolution — at %LOCALAPPDATA%\agwinterm-lite\lite.log (lite-<instance>.log for named instances), rotating at ~1 MB into .log.old. It records what lite did, never terminal output, pasted text, or your command lines, so it's safe to attach to an issue.

Grab agwinterm-lite-setup-<version>.exe from Releases (per-user, no admin), or build it (needs the VC++ ATL component): ./lite/build.ps1 (dev build) / ./installer/build-lite.ps1 (setup).

Reporting a lite problem

Run agwinterm-lite --diagnose and attach its output plus lite.log. The report is read-only and safe to run while lite is open; it prints the state file's path, whether that directory is genuinely writable (a real write probe, which is what catches a redirected or policy-locked profile), the state file's contents, the resolved font, and the bundled pack inventory:

> agwinterm-lite --diagnose
  version: 0.17.2
  instance: (default)
state
  dir: C:\Users\you\AppData\Local\agwinterm-lite
  dir writable: yes
  session file: ...\sessions.tsv
    size: 59 bytes

Keyboard essentials

Key	Action
F1	Help (effective keybindings + accessibility guide)
F6	Move focus terminal ⇄ session list
Ctrl+Shift+D	Dashboard — grid of live sessions
Ctrl+Shift+T / Ctrl+Shift+R	New session / reopen closed
Ctrl+Tab	MRU session switcher
Ctrl+D	Split pane · Ctrl+` quick terminal · Ctrl+J scratch
Ctrl+Shift+P	Action palette
F11	Fullscreen

Everything is rebindable in keymap.conf (see F1 for the live list).

Configuration

• %LOCALAPPDATA%\agwinterm\agwinterm.conf — appearance & behavior (also editable in Settings).
• %LOCALAPPDATA%\agwinterm\keymap.conf — keybindings + custom commands + leader chords.
• Themes: the bundled set ships with the app; drop extra ghostty-format *.conf files in %LOCALAPPDATA%\agwinterm\themes\.

Acknowledgements

• umputun / agterm — the original and the inspiration for every bit of this project's UX. 💜
• Ghostty & iTerm2-Color-Schemes — the bundled color themes are the community ghostty/iTerm2 set.
• Vortice.Windows (Direct2D/DirectWrite), Porta.Pty (ConPTY), and microsoft/terminal's OpenConsole for the default-terminal handoff.

License

MIT © 2026 Boris Kudriashov. Bundled theme files retain their upstream (iTerm2-Color-Schemes, MIT) licensing.