agwinterm is a fast, custom-drawn Win32 + Direct2D terminal that treats AI coding agents as first-class citizens: workspaces with per-session agent status (idle, active, blocked, completed), a scriptable control API (agwintermctl or JSON over a named pipe), splits, quick and scratch terminals, and multi-window support. It is a real Windows terminal (ConPTY, Default Terminal Application integration, Sixel and Kitty graphics, kitty keyboard protocol, ligatures), fully screen-reader accessible (UI Automation text document, announced output, keyboard-navigable UI), and themeable with about 580 bundled color schemes. A Windows homage to umputun's agterm.
README
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.
💜 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. 🙏
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 (): a grid of session previews — arrow-navigate, Enter or
double-click to jump in; or drive it with .
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.
agwinterm-portable--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):
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 --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 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.
Keyboard essentials
Key
Action
F1
Help (effective keybindings + accessibility guide)
