Computers, terminal and Git

Interactive terminal access and limits

Find out who can open a Project terminal, where it runs and what keeps it alive or ends it.

Who can open one

A terminal needs a signed-in web session. A personal API token and the agent's own credential are refused, because neither is a person at a keyboard.

An account can have four terminals open at once and the instance 32, and a terminal can only be opened in a Project the account is a member of. Losing membership or the plugin grant ends the terminal.

Where it runs

An interactive terminal is a person's own shell, sandboxed exactly like a command that person runs in chat: an operator's terminal runs directly on the host, and anyone else's runs under bubblewrap with their account HOME. Confine non-operator commands decides the same thing for them as it does for commands.

In a managed Project the terminal opens inside its running environment and starts in the Project directory, so start a stopped environment first. Host and managed terminals use Bash with job control, including Ctrl+C to interrupt a foreground command.

On a paired computer

A paired Linux or Windows computer opens its terminal on that computer and uses its own Git and GitHub CLI sign-in. The computer must be online with a current client, the account needs explicit membership, and Linux needs /usr/bin/python3.

Windows uses PowerShell in a ConPTY terminal and requires Windows build 18309 or newer. Other computer operating systems cannot open an interactive terminal.

An offline or outdated client is reported in the terminal window, so update or reconnect it before you try again. Reconnecting the computer ends the old terminal; a replacement connection cannot inherit it, so open a new one.

Window controls

The terminal window uses your Account → Terminal appearance settings. Select the terminal icon on a Project card in Projects to open a shell.

Minimize or press Escape to keep the shell running in the dock; select its captioned icon to restore it.
A second terminal in the same Project has a numbered caption.
Select Close terminal and stop the shell to end the shell immediately, together with everything it started. Nothing asks for confirmation.
After the shell exits, New terminal opens another one in that Project.

Survive a reload

Minimizing keeps the terminal connected and running. After a page reload or a lost browser connection, it waits up to thirty minutes for you to return; after that the shell is ended.

Reloading restores up to 1 MiB of recent terminal output, and full-screen programs may need a resize to redraw. Opening the same terminal in a second window takes it over, and the older window offers to take it back.

Terminals do not survive a daemon restart, exactly like background processes.

Credentials

The account's GitHub credential is available in confined host and managed shells under the same rules as Bash, with credential output redacted. A direct host shell does not receive that credential.

Open an interactive Project terminal, Terminal overview, Run a shell command, Set up an account development environment.