Getting Started

Download

Download the latest release from the GitHub Releases page. After installing, maiTerm checks for updates automatically and notifies you when a new version is available — update with a single click.

Platform	Format
macOS	DMG
Windows	NSIS installer (.exe)
Linux	.deb package

Prerequisites (Building from Source)

If you want to build maiTerm from source, you’ll need:

All platforms:

• Node.js 18+
• Rust

macOS:

• macOS 13+
• Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install)

Windows:

• Windows 10/11
• Visual Studio Build Tools — select “Desktop development with C++” workload
• WebView2 (pre-installed on Windows 10/11)

Linux:

• WebKitGTK 4.1, GTK 3, libayatana-appindicator3
• See Tauri Linux prerequisites

First Launch

1. Open maiTerm
2. You’ll start with a default workspace and a single terminal tab
3. The terminal spawns your default shell automatically

Quick Tips

• Cmd+T — new tab
• Cmd+D — split pane (duplicates current tab with full context)
• Cmd+Opt+N — new workspace
• Cmd+E — notes panel · Cmd+Shift+E — task panel
• Cmd+Shift+B — Files, the project tree that shows what your agents read and change
• Cmd+, — open preferences
• Cmd+/ — help and keyboard shortcuts

Setting Up Agent Integration

maiTerm integrates with Claude Code and OpenAI Codex, both enabled by default. When you run claude or codex in a terminal tab, maiTerm automatically:

1. Exposes MCP/IDE tools to the agent
2. Tracks live state through the agent’s hooks
3. Captures the session ID and enables auto-resume
4. Binds the session to the tab it’s running in

No configuration needed, and no registration step: the tab identifies itself on the wire and the session links itself when the agent starts, so a restart, a resume or a compaction all come back correctly bound with nothing typed. (/maiterm init still exists, but only as a repair tool — see acting as the right tab.)

To choose which agents maiTerm wires up — locally and over SSH — open Preferences → AI Agents. See Agent Integration for the full picture.

Claude Code on Windows

Claude Code uses Git Bash to run its commands, and maiTerm’s hooks, the part that tells maiTerm which tab a Claude session is in, are shell scripts that run the same way. Without Git for Windows, Claude falls back to PowerShell and maiTerm’s tab tracking, tasks and Overlord can’t reach your Claude sessions.

The Set up Claude on Windows wizard checks this for you. It opens by itself once, on the first launch that finds Git for Windows or Claude Code missing, and any time from Preferences → Default Shell → Check Claude setup…. It checks for:

• Git for Windows, wherever it’s installed. Install runs it through winget in a visible tab, or opens the download page when winget isn’t there
• The shell for new tabs, with a Use Git Bash button when Git is installed but tabs use something else
• Claude Code. Install runs Anthropic’s official installer in a visible tab
• Whether claude is on your PATH. Its installer doesn’t add it. maiTerm’s own tabs find it anyway; Add to PATH puts it on your user PATH so other terminals do too
• An older Claude Desktop that takes over claude, so typing it opens the desktop app. The wizard tells you how to turn that alias off
• WSL, which it reports but doesn’t set up: Claude inside WSL is a separate install, and maiTerm’s Claude integration is set up for Windows itself

Fix everything does whatever it can at once. When nothing is missing, Start Claude in a new tab takes you straight in.

The default shell is Automatic (Git Bash when installed): Git Bash when Git for Windows is there, PowerShell when it isn’t. If you’d picked a shell before this setting existed, you keep it. Change it under Preferences → Default Shell; it applies to new tabs.

Windows support for Claude is new and has had less real-world use than macOS. The Claude Code mod isn’t loaded on Windows yet, so Claude tabs there run on the settings hooks alone.

Your agent also shares a kanban board with you out of the box: it records what it’s working on, you edit the same rows in a panel on Cmd+Shift+E, and each side sees the other’s changes.

Let the workspace run your project

Right-click a workspace in the sidebar and choose Import from project…. maiTerm reads what the directory already declares — package.json scripts, a Procfile, a compose file, a justfile or a Makefile — and offers them as a checklist. Tick the ones that should come up with the workspace and they become part of its stack: started in tabs maiTerm owns, watched in a console drawer, restarted when they crash, and visible to your agents so they stop starting a second copy of a dev server that’s already running.

When a service announces where it’s serving, maiTerm reads the address off its own output and puts it on the row — nothing to configure. Shift-click the row, or use the ↗ on it, to open that in your browser.