The terminal

Conch has a terminal built in: a real shell on the computer Conch runs on, one keystroke away from whatever you're doing. Check a file, restart something, or run the command the assistant just suggested, without leaving the chat.

Opening it

Press Ctrl + ` (⌘ + ` on a Mac), or click the terminal button at the top right. The terminal slides up from the bottom with a shell ready, in your working folder. Press the same keys again to put it away.

• Another terminal: the + in its tab bar, or Ctrl/⌘ + Shift + `. The arrow beside the + opens one with a different shell (PowerShell, Command Prompt, Git Bash, zsh, bash, fish…).
• Bigger or smaller: drag the top edge, or press the expand button to fill the screen.
• Leave it for the chat: Shift + Esc moves the keyboard back to the message box.
• Close a terminal: the × on its tab, or Close this terminal. Closing it ends the shell. Hiding the panel doesn't.
• You can also find Show the terminal and New terminal in Ctrl/⌘ + K.

It keeps going

Hiding the panel, reloading the page, or putting your laptop to sleep doesn't stop anything. When you come back, you get the same shell, with what it printed and whatever is still running. A tab shows a small pearl when a shell you're not looking at prints something.

When a shell ends, the terminal says so and offers Restart. If Conch itself restarted, your terminals ended with it, so the panel quietly opens a fresh one in the same folder.

Working with the assistant

• Ask about output. Select something in the terminal (an error, a log) and press Ask Conch. It goes into the message box, ready for your question.
• Run in terminal. Commands in the assistant's replies have a Run in terminal button. It types the command into your terminal and waits. Nothing runs until you press Enter.
• The assistant can't see or use your terminals. What you do there stays between you and your computer.

Copy, paste, find

• Copy: select, then Ctrl + C (⌘ + C). With nothing selected, Ctrl + C stops the running command, as usual.
• Paste: Ctrl + V (⌘ + V).
• Find: the magnifying glass in the tab bar.
• Links in the output open in a new tab.
• On a phone or tablet, a row of keys adds Esc, Tab, Ctrl and the arrows.

Settings

Settings → Terminal:

• Let me open terminals in Conch. Turn it off, and the button, the shortcut and every open terminal go away. Pressing the shortcut again explains why, with a Turn it on button.
• Shell: your usual one, or another installed shell.
• Text size, Blinking cursor, and Screen reader support, which makes what the terminal prints readable to screen readers.

Staying safe

A terminal can run anything as you, so Conch is careful with it:

• Only on this computer, unless you say otherwise. On your phone or another computer, terminals are off. To use one there, turn on From other devices in Settings → Terminal. That asks for your password first, and the security checkup reminds you while it's on.
• Even then, it checks it's you. Every time another device opens a terminal, or reconnects to one, it asks for your password or key if you haven't entered it in the last 10 minutes. A stolen sign-in alone isn't enough.
• Signing a device out ends its terminals. So does revoking a key, or turning From other devices off.
• Nothing is recorded. Conch never logs what you type or what a terminal prints. Scrollback stays in memory only, and is gone when the terminal ends.
• Conch's own settings stay out of it. The shell gets your usual environment, without Conch's configuration.

When something goes wrong

Mostly, you won't notice: Conch fixes it by itself.

• A shell that stops right away is usually a broken shell profile. The terminal offers Start without your profile, so you can open it and fix the profile from there. The arrow beside + has Without your shell profile too.
• A shell that's gone (you uninstalled it): Conch uses the next one it finds.
• A folder that's gone: the terminal opens in your home folder instead.
• A dropped connection reconnects by itself, and the screen comes back as it was.
• A graphics problem switches the terminal to a simpler way of drawing, without a flicker.
• If Conch's usual way of running terminals can't load on this computer, it uses a Python 3 terminal on macOS or Linux. If neither is available, basic commands still work, without full-screen programs. The native library is optional, so failing to build it never blocks installation or an update. Settings → Terminal lists what it fixed, under Fixed on its own.

For developers

• Code lives in apps/server/src/terminal/ (gateway), apps/web/src/features/terminal/ (app) and packages/nacre/src/patterns/Terminal/ (design system). The decision record is ADR 0015.
• Shells get TERM=xterm-256color, COLORTERM=truecolor and TERM_PROGRAM=conch, so scripts can tell they're inside Conch.
• The e2e journey is e2e/terminal.spec.ts. It turns on screen reader support to read what the shell printed.