Terminals

Real PTY sessions bound to a worktree, in an adaptive grid, organized into groups.

Every worktree gets one or more terminal panes, arranged in an adaptive grid. Terminals are real PTY sessions — top, htop, vim, and full-screen TUIs all work. On Windows the default shell is PowerShell; you can change the shell, font, and scrollback length in settings.

An AI agent is a terminal too: it's a TUI running in one. So everything on this page applies to your agents as well.

Working directory#

Each terminal opens in its worktree's folder, so commands run against the right checkout from the start.

An agent started in a Tegment terminal automatically inherits its context — which worktree it's in, and how to reach this Tegment instance. So once you've set up the MCP server for that agent, it can act on this worktree from here without any per-terminal configuration.

The Terminals sidebar#

The Terminals section at the top of the left sidebar lists everything you have open in the current repository. New terminals sit flat in that list, and that is all you need to know until you want more structure.

Groups#

A group is a named set of terminals inside one repository. Where a worktree is the git unit (a branch with its own folder), a group is the work unit: the epic, release, or task you're focused on, and everything you've opened to get it done.

Groups are optional. Ungrouped terminals stay at the top of the section, and any groups you create sit below them.

Creating a group

Use the New group button in the section header, type a name (for example an epic, a release, or a ticket), and press Enter. That's all you set at creation. Tegment picks an accent color for you automatically, and the new group becomes active.

To adjust a group later, right-click its row (or double-click the name to rename). The menu gives you Rename, Color, Bind worktree, and Delete.

Drag a terminal onto a group to move it there, or drop it back on the flat list at the top to take it out again. The same moves live under Move to group, which every terminal menu carries: the sidebar row, the right-click menu inside the pane, and the pane header menu. It flies out into the other groups, with No group for leaving one and Create new… at the bottom, which names a group and moves the terminal into it in one gesture.

Binding worktrees

Binding is optional. It tells a group which worktrees it works on, so a group can just as well be a free, thematic grouping with no worktree attached. Toggle worktrees on or off from the group's Bind worktree menu. When a group is bound, that drives what happens when you start a terminal in it:

• One bound worktree: new terminals and agents open there directly.
• Several bound worktrees: Tegment asks which of them to use.
• No binding: Tegment lets you pick from all the repository's worktrees, and starts straight away when there is only one to pick.

Where a new terminal lands

When you start a terminal or agent from a worktree (for example from a GitHub or Jira issue), one rule decides where it goes: if a group is bound to that worktree, the terminal opens there. Otherwise it stays ungrouped, at the top of the list.

Nothing interrupts you to ask, and nothing is grouped on your behalf. Sorting work into a group is something you do when you want it, by binding a worktree or dragging the terminal across.

Switching groups

Click a group row to make it active, and its terminals fill the grid. Expand a row with its chevron to see what's inside.

From the keyboard, Ctrl+Shift+PageDown and Ctrl+Shift+PageUp cycle through the groups in creation order, and Ctrl+Shift+1 through 9 jump straight to one by position. See Keyboard shortcuts.

Each group owns its own layout, so the grid or split arrangement you set up is remembered per group, not shared across all of them.

Colors

Each group carries an accent color drawn from a palette of eight distinct hues. Tegment assigns the next unused color when you create a group, so your first several groups are easy to tell apart at a glance. Pick a specific color from the Color menu, or reset it back to automatic. The accent tints the group's icon, its name, and the rail connecting its terminals, and it adapts to light and dark themes.

Terminal colors#

A terminal takes the color of the group that owns it, so creating a group colors its terminals without you picking anything. In the sidebar it tints the terminal's icon; in the center area it depends on how the panes are arranged:

• Split view: the terminal's tab is tinted, and the pane's current tab carries an underline in the same color.
• Grid view: the pane header is tinted, since a grid draws no tabs.

To give one terminal its own color, open Color in its menu (the pane header, its right-click menu, the tab's right-click menu, or the sidebar row's menu) and pick a swatch. Group color hands it back to its group.

An ungrouped terminal stays neutral until you color it yourself.

Terminal actions#

Each terminal row has its own menu: right-click it, or use the ⋮ button that appears when you hover the row or reach it with the keyboard. From there you rename it, color it, move it to another group, focus its worktree, open that folder or your IDE, run a template, start the app, or close it.

The same actions are reachable from the terminal itself. The pane header has a ⋮ button and a right-click menu, and right-clicking a pane tab opens that menu too, so you don't have to make a tab active to act on it. (Right-clicking inside the terminal area is left alone: it still pastes.)

Rename works from all of them. From the sidebar the row's name becomes an editable field in place; from a tab or the pane header you edit the header's label. An empty name is refused, so a terminal never loses its label to a stray Enter.

Links#

Clicking a URL in a terminal opens it in your browser. Agents are the exception worth knowing about: Claude Code and other full-screen programs open links themselves on Ctrl-click (⌘-click on macOS), so Tegment stays out of the way there and handles the plain click instead. That way a link opens exactly once, whichever way you click it.

Settings → Terminal → Open links in agent terminals turns Tegment's side off if you would rather leave every click to the agent. Plain shells open links on a click either way.

A running app on its neighbours#

When you start a build & run config, its badge appears on every terminal and agent in the same worktree, not just the one you started it from, so you can see and stop it from wherever you happen to be looking.

Settings → Terminal → App badge on sibling terminals sets how much those neighbours show:

The terminal that started the app always keeps the full controls.

Session restore#

When you reopen Tegment, it restores your layout: the same projects, worktrees, tabs, and terminal panes come back. The shells themselves are started fresh, so a terminal's running process and scrollback don't survive quitting the app.

Closing a project

Closing a project tab asks what to do with the terminals it has open. Save and close puts them aside, and opening that project again rebuilds them: the same names, groups, layout and worktrees, with each agent resuming the conversation it was in rather than the last one it happened to have. Close without saving drops them, and also drops anything saved from an earlier close, so a project can't come back with state you just turned down.

Running processes are stopped either way, and the dialog says so. If a worktree was removed while the project was closed, that terminal reopens on the repository root with a warning instead of vanishing.

Sidebar settings#

Settings → Terminal is one page for everything about terminals, split into labelled blocks. Two of them cover how much each sidebar row shows.

Sidebar — terminal rows:

Sidebar — groups:

Shortcuts#

Every terminal action has a keyboard shortcut, from Ctrl+Shift+T for a new terminal to Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V to copy and paste. See Keyboard shortcuts for the full list and how to remap them.