Slate Terminal — The terminal you can shape

3 min read Original article ↗

Slate Terminal

A native macOS terminal. Add your own panels, commands and layouts, or ask your agent to build them.

Download for Mac Star on GitHub

macOS 27 or later · Apple silicon

Demo: build a workspace with your agent, use it, and save it as an app

Illustrated example workflow. In a Slate terminal, the user asks Claude Code for an agents sidebar, then a deploys panel, then a latency chart, one request at a time. In time-lapse, the agent writes each plugin and opens it as a panel. At real speed, one agent finishes its work; the user opens its card in the sidebar, reviews the changes and merges them. The deploys panel follows the rollout to live, and the latency chart marks the deploy. The user saves the layout from the command picker as a Spotlight launcher with a name and an icon, then reopens it from the Dock. Three proposed workspaces follow, each opened from the Dock or Spotlight on its own Space: a review desk, a reading room and an experiment workbench.

An illustrated workflow. The tools shown are examples you could build.

Everything a terminal should be. And then some.

A native terminal, powered by libghostty.

Tabs and nested splits in a native Mac workspace. Zoom one pane, or even them out.

See what your agents are doing.

A floating pill at the bottom right shows who is working in a pane and why.

Custom views

Your tools. Inside your terminal.

Build a live dashboard, a review queue or a little scratchpad. Custom HTML, CSS and JavaScript views live right beside your shell.

Plugins add what’s missing.

Build panels with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Add commands and services as you need them.

  • Panels
  • Commands
  • Header buttons
  • Background services
  • Workspace events

Agent native.

Your agent can do anything you can. The slate-term CLI lets it write plugins, split panes and save layouts.

claude — launchpadIllustrative

❯ claude
> Tail my deploys in a panel beside this shell, then save the layout.

● Write(deploy-tail/plugin.json, deploy-tail/index.html)
● Bash(slate-term plugins register --manifest ./deploy-tail/plugin.json)
  ⎿ registered deploy-tail
● Bash(slate-term panes split --pane p1 --right --type deploy-tail)
  ⎿ opened p2
● Bash(slate-term layouts capture --window w1 --name 'Launch Day')
● Bash(slate-term layouts launcher --id L3 --path ~/Applications/Launch\ Day.app)
  ⎿ created Launch Day.app

✓ Deploys is open on the right. Launch Day is in Spotlight.

Plugins

Panels, commands and background services.

The CLI

Split panes, send input, capture the screen.

The agent skill

Teaches your agent Slate’s API.

Bring the agents you already use.

Claude Code · Codex · Gemini CLI · Aider · OpenCode · your own script

Slate provides the workspace. You choose the agent and model.

Plugin ideas

Make room for bigger ideas.

A few ideas for panels you can build with Slate’s plugin system.

Ideas to build. They don’t ship with Slate.