Terax: One Developer Built an AI Terminal Better Than Warp
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Transcript
00:00:00This is Terax, an open source AI native terminal built with Tauri2 and Rust that gives you a
00:00:05multi-tab terminal, a code editor, a file preview sidebar, and a web browser, all in a 7 megabyte
00:00:12app that starts in under 300 milliseconds. It even has its own AI agent that reads your entire
00:00:17code base, runs commands, and proposes edits as reviewable diffs. But with Warp at over 58,000
00:00:24stars on GitHub, and Cmox with support for agent-based notifications, is a tiny app built
00:00:28by one person really worth your time? Get subscribed and let's find out.
00:00:36Terax was made by a developer called Krinter, who started it as a side project because they wanted
00:00:40a faster, lighter version of Warp, with AI built into it for coding and not bolted on as an afterthought.
00:00:46So Terax does all of that. It implements a real terminal using Xterm.js with WebGPU, the same as
00:00:53VS Code, with a real code editor powered by CodeMirror 6, and a real AI agent using Vercel's AI SDK,
00:01:00which can pretty much be used for any model out there, including local ones.
00:01:04But how does it pull all of these things together with such a tiny footprint?
00:01:08Well, it uses Tauri2 instead of Electron, which means no bundled Chromium, saving an extra 200 megabytes.
00:01:14The Rust back-end handles everything that touches the OS, so Pty, File System Process Management,
00:01:20and the React front-end just renders the UI. So the whole thing is around 7 megabytes.
00:01:25And if you watched my video on Cmox, you may be wondering how Terax compares to it.
00:01:29Well, I'll go through a more detailed comparison later on in the video, but for now, let's take Terax for a spin.
00:01:34So after you install Terax, the first thing that may stand out to you is the file menu on the left-hand side.
00:01:39Check this out. If I navigate with CD, immediately this goes to the right place, meaning I don't need to use LS.
00:01:45So I go to a different vault, a different directory, it takes me in this straight away, and go back to where I was before.
00:01:51I can also create new tabs, close them, and create splits, just like you would in most modern terminals.
00:01:57If I go into the package's UI directory and open up a file service app TSX, you can immediately see it opens the Terax code editor
00:02:05that has syntax highlighting for most languages.
00:02:08But if I wanted to, I could use my terminal-based file editors like Helix, for example, and of course use AI coding tools like Claude Code.
00:02:14But there are a few benefits to using the Terax editor.
00:02:17So if you look at the bottom right-hand corner, there's an OpenAI Agent button, which allows me to choose a model.
00:02:23So right now, I've put in my OpenAI and Claude API keys, which are stored using the native OS keyring.
00:02:29And from here, I can ask questions about the opened file, like why are there so many functions in the use effect hook?
00:02:34And the agent will search through the file and give me an answer.
00:02:37Now, you'll notice here that I can see the amount of context that I've used, and I can change the type of agent that's being used.
00:02:43I can also go to previous sessions over here and ask follow-up questions.
00:02:46Now, Terax currently only has two subcommands.
00:02:48Plan to go into plan mode, which shows over here.
00:02:51Triggering plan again goes back into build mode.
00:02:54And init, which will go through the whole project and create a Terax MD file, similar to a Claude or Agents MD file.
00:03:00And when it does that, it shows us a code diff, which of course we can accept or reject.
00:03:04Now, because I already have a Terax MD file over here, I'm going to reject it.
00:03:08But what I could do is ask it to make changes to this specific file.
00:03:12And if there are changes, it gives us a nice diff showing us what will be removed and what will be added, also giving us the option to accept or reject.
00:03:18But I can also do some really cool things with Terax.
00:03:21Check this out.
00:03:21So if I press this button, I can open up a privacy page, which means this tab is hidden from AI.
00:03:26I could open a new editor window to create a new file, or I could open the browser, which even gives me a list of common ports.
00:03:33So if I run this app and navigate to the right ports, I could interact with my app on one tab and make code changes in the other without jumping between different tools.
00:03:41Inside the settings, I could change the editor theme, enable Vim mode, which I really like, adjust the agents, give custom instructions and reusable prompts.
00:03:49Now, I will admit there are some things I don't like about Terax.
00:03:52Right now, I can open my project in Helix, which is fine.
00:03:55But if I did the same thing in NeoVim, it just kind of crashes.
00:03:58And I'm not sure if that's because I'm using Nix and I've got a weird Nix fish shell configuration, but NeoVim works fine in Western.
00:04:04I couldn't figure out how to navigate the left sidebar with the keyboard.
00:04:08So even though I could navigate to different directories, if I wanted to open a file, there's no Terax open command or a keyboard shortcut to go to the sidebar.
00:04:15I mean, I can open and close the sidebar with command B, but if I wanted to open a file, I'd have to click on it with the mouse, which isn't something I expect to do in a terminal.
00:04:24I also can't zoom in with command plus for some reason that hasn't been enabled.
00:04:28And if I wanted to go to a non local host site in the browser, I get this X frame options error, which I kind of get for security reasons because it's using iframes, but it would be nice to be able to do this.
00:04:38Honestly, for something that was built with mostly JavaScript, this is incredibly performant.
00:04:43I mean, I was skeptical when the author chose not to use libghosty for the terminal.
00:04:47But if I didn't know this was open source and had no idea what code was used to build this, I would have thought this used a systems language.
00:04:54Well, it kind of does because Tauri is rust, but you get what I mean.
00:04:57Basically, it's amazing what can be done nowadays by a single developer using AI and many open source tools.
00:05:04I mean, this almost rivals warp, which was built by a whole company and has VC funding.
00:05:09Not to mention this isn't even a 1.0 version of Terax.
00:05:12So I'm sure there'll be more features and more fixes coming later in the pipeline.
00:05:16But how does this compare to CMUX?
00:05:18Well, Terax is an agentic development environment like warp, whereas CMUX is a different tool altogether.
00:05:24It gives your agents the ability to control everything in the terminal.
00:05:28So you can create new panes, new tabs, control the sidebar, rename the sidebar and so on,
00:05:32which is perfect for multi-agent workflows.
00:05:34With Terax, on the other hand, the agent is only scoped to look at the code and files.
00:05:39So it can't create new tabs and new split panes.
00:05:42It can't control the sidebar, but it can make adjustments to the code itself.
00:05:45So if you want your agents to open up browsers, navigate the web and spin up sub-agents, then check out CMUX.
00:05:51But if you want to code in the terminal, use an agent to make changes and view the changes in the browser, then use Terax.
00:05:58Personally, I'll be sticking with West Term and NeoVim for most of my development.
00:06:01And if you want to know why I'm choosing ResTerm over, say, Ghosty, then check out this video.
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