A terminal emulator for the vibe coding era. Actually it is built for a renaissance of "multi-tasking" brought to us in form of vibe coding. The category of the terminal app is one of the first that ever existed and yet has never been really re-thought from the ground up. Here is a stab at it: If you are in a terminal session, but another session (tab) needs your attention (LLM is calling for help!) with a key-combo or click on can switch to the next highest-priority session. Except that feature is still a bit buggy. What works well though is the Markdown rendering. With English being the hottest new coding language and AI-assisted coders mostly editing markdown files this is a nice feature to have. Check out below screenshot based on command "vi README.md": it shows the screen of the anient vi editor - it does not know that the terminal program detects markdown, rescales fonts and detects other formatting do-dads. Having surplus compute a 'raising bubble' effect has been added via a click and the hidden 'matrix rain' animation to complete the orchestration - all geared to keep you in the "flow" so you can keep vibe-coding!
Please note that this is a hobby project in an early stage. One cannot with confidence say this terminal app is ready for sensitive projects because it has not been thoroughly tested and contains AI-generated code!
That said: it would be all the more helpful if you try it out and leave some feedback or maybe even contribute!
- Semi-Markdown mode: Font-aware markdown rendering with bold, italic, headers, and more in the terminal
- Smart tab switching: Ctrl+Tab jumps to the tab that needs your attention most
- AI chat navigation: Jump back and forth in AI chat conversations using key combos (ctrl-shift arrow-up/down)
- Split panes: Single, vertical, horizontal, and quad layouts. Inspired by
tmuxbut with copy/paste working - Git support: yep, another git client built in
- Views: dashboard, command history, version control, file browser: different views available using key-combo or button
- Graphics effects: Physics-based particle effects like raising bubbles, snow-fall. Reason: no reason, just fun for the flow and all
- Productivity tools: built-in optional clock and pomodoro timer
- Node.js 18+
- npm
git clone https://github.com/beoinformatics/termlife-app.git
cd termlife-app
npm install
npm run devnpm run build| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Cmd/Ctrl+T |
New tab |
Cmd/Ctrl+W |
Close tab |
Cmd/Ctrl+1-9 |
Switch to tab N |
Ctrl+Tab |
Smart tab switch |
Ctrl+Shift+K |
Toggle Semi-Markdown mode |
Ctrl+Shift+C |
Toggle CRT filter |
Ctrl+Shift+M |
Toggle Matrix rain |
Shift+PageUp/Down |
Scroll up/down |
Cmd/Ctrl+C |
Copy selection |
Cmd/Ctrl+V |
Paste |
TermLife uses @xterm/headless as the ANSI state machine and PixiJS v8 for all rendering. PTY processes are managed via node-pty in Electron's main process.
PTY (node-pty) → IPC → @xterm/headless → CellGrid → PixiJS GPU rendering
Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to get started.
MIT — Copyright (c) 2026 Eckart Bindewald and contributors