GitHub - nowledge-co/con-terminal: The Native Terminal Emulator with a builtin AI Harness

The terminal emulator with AI harness, nothing more

Open source. GPU-accelerated. Terminal-first.

Built for SSH, tmux, and agent-native workflows.

Why con?

con is for people who want a serious terminal first and AI help only when it earns its place.

If you're an old-school terminal user and only want enough AI harness when needed, nothing more or less, con is for you.

a terminal that is fast and elegant
a built-in AI harness that can read context, ask before acting, and work directly in the terminal you can already see
terminal-native workflows for CLI work, with ssh, tmux, and coding-agent-aware orchestration

con is in active beta development.

con-demo.1.mp4

Quick controls:

Action	macOS	Windows / Linux
Switch focus between terminal and input	`⌘` `I`	`⌃` `⇧` `I`
Show or hide the bottom input bar	`⌃` `	`⌃` `
Show or hide the agent panel	`⌘` `L`	`⌃` `⇧` `L`
Cycle bottom-bar mode	`⌘` `;`	`⌃` `;`

Smart mode decides whether your text is a shell command or an agent request.
Command mode runs shell commands. With multiple panes, the pane mini map lets you choose the focused pane, all panes, or a selected set.
Agent mode sends text directly to the built-in agent.

macOS, Homebrew

brew install --cask nowledge-co/tap/con-beta

This installs the app and exposes con-cli on your PATH for automation.

macOS

curl -fsSL https://con-releases.nowledge.co/install.sh | sh

This installs the app into /Applications and links con-cli into ~/.local/bin. Or download the DMG directly from Releases.

Linux (preview)

curl -fsSL https://con-releases.nowledge.co/install.sh | sh

This installs both con and con-cli into ~/.local/bin. Or download con-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz from the latest Release.

Arch Linux

Arch Linux users can install con via pacman -S con-bin or paru -S con-bin or yay -S con-bin .

Windows

irm https://con-releases.nowledge.co/install.ps1 | iex

This installs con-app.exe and con-cli.exe into the same PATH directory. Or download con-windows-x86_64.zip from the latest Release.

For Scoop users, here's how to install:

scoop bucket add jam https://github.com/EFLKumo/jam
scoop install jam/con-terminal

This will make con portable and add con-app and con-cli to your PATH.

To build from source, see HACKING.md.

Start here:

Install: get con on macOS, Windows, or Linux.
Quick controls: focus switching, agent panel, and command modes.
Terminal workflows: tabs, panes, broadcast, pane zoom, links, and surfaces.
Built-in agent: use AI help without leaving the terminal.
Settings: choose providers, themes, suggestions, skills, and shortcuts.
Skills and workflows: turn repeated terminal routines into project or personal slash commands.
Workspace layout profiles: save a project layout, reopen it later, or share it with a team.
con-cli and surfaces: build scripts, test runners, and external agent orchestrators on top of con.
Screenshot gallery: a visual tour of the app.
Release notes: what changed in each beta.

For contributors:

con depends on upstream projects we rely on directly and respect deeply:

Ghostty for the terminal runtime and rendering foundation that powers our embedded terminal surfaces.
GPUI from the Zed team for the native GPU UI framework we build the shell on.
gpui-component from the Longbridge team for the component library that accelerates much of the UI layer.
Rig for the lovely Rust agent framework behind con's AI harness.
Phosphor Icons for the icon system used across the app.
Flexoki for the default visual theme direction.
Iosevka and Ioskeley Mono for the mono type foundation used in terminal chrome and code-heavy UI.

con was initially inspired by warp.dev, but is doing less than warp, if you need more, you should go for warp instead.