---
title: "tty7"
sidebarTitle: "Introduction"
description: "A terminal workbench: persistent sessions, remote work, agents."
mode: "wide"
---

<Frame>
  <video autoPlay muted loop playsInline controls poster="/images/tour-poster.webp" src="/images/tour.mp4" aria-label="A one-minute tour of tty7: agents across repos, one agent driving another, the prompt editor, diffs, dragging panes, and sessions that outlive the window" />
</Frame>

tty7 is a terminal you can leave running. Close the window, reboot the machine,
walk to a different laptop — the shells you started are still there, and so are
the coding agents you left working in them.

It is written in Rust, renders on the GPU through Zed's
[gpui](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed), and parses VT with Alacritty's
terminal core. In practice that means roughly twice the throughput of Alacritty,
Ghostty, or Kitty on a big `cat`, and a frame rate that does not fall over when
something floods the screen.

## What makes it different

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Sessions that outlive the app" icon="power-off" href="/getting-started/concepts">
    A background server owns your shells, not the window. Quit tty7 and your
    builds keep building. No tmux to learn or configure.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Editor-grade input" icon="keyboard" href="/terminal/prompt">
    Ghost suggestions from your history, tab completion that explains each flag,
    syntax highlighting, click-to-place-caret, real multi-line editing.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Agent-aware" icon="robot" href="/agents/overview">
    25 coding CLIs are recognised on sight. Per-pane status dots, notifications
    when one needs you, git context, and session resume after a reboot.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Remote work that feels local" icon="server" href="/remote/workspaces">
    A native Rust SSH stack with profiles, SFTP, and port forwarding — plus
    remote workspaces where files, repos, and panes all stay on the far machine.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Git where you are looking" icon="code-branch" href="/git/source-control">
    Branch and diff counts on every sidebar row, a source control panel, a diff
    overlay, and worktrees in one dialog.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Scriptable" icon="terminal" href="/cli/overview">
    A bundled `tty7` CLI that opens panes, sends keys, reads screens, and blocks
    until an agent needs you — so scripts and agents can drive the workbench.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Start here

<Steps>
  <Step title="Install it">
    Native builds for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
    [Installation →](/getting-started/installation)
  </Step>
  <Step title="Set it up">
    Five minutes of settings that pay for themselves.
    [First launch →](/getting-started/first-launch)
  </Step>
  <Step title="Learn the three words">
    Workspace, tab, pane — and the server underneath them.
    [Core concepts →](/getting-started/concepts)
  </Step>
</Steps>

## How fast, exactly

Same machine, same day, same 155×40 grid — Apple M1 Pro, macOS 26.3.1,
five-run averages.

| | **tty7** | Alacritty | Ghostty | Kitty |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| Plaintext I/O — 11 MB `cat` <sub>(lower is better)</sub> | **95 ms** | 239 ms | 179 ms | 185 ms |
| [DOOM-fire](https://github.com/const-void/DOOM-fire-zig) frame rate <sub>(higher is better)</sub> | **888 fps** | 485 fps | 552 fps | 617 fps |
| Cold-launch memory | 116 MB <sup>1</sup> | 105 MB | 128 MB | 130 MB |

<sub><sup>1</sup> GUI 105 MB plus the persistent server at 11 MB.</sub>

The methodology and a one-command reproduction live in
[`scripts/bench/`](https://github.com/l0ng-ai/tty7/tree/main/scripts/bench).

Three decisions account for most of it:

- **The PTY is read at device speed** and parsed in large batches, off the
  render path — so drawing never throttles reading.
- **The hot paths are lock-free.** A big `cat` never waits on the renderer.
- **The server buffers up to 16 MiB** ahead of the window before backpressure
  applies, which is enough that a flood finishes writing while the window is
  still catching up.

## Getting help

<CardGroup cols={3}>
  <Card title="Discord" icon="discord" href="https://discord.gg/s3dethqz2V">
    Ask a question, show what you built.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Issues" icon="github" href="https://github.com/l0ng-ai/tty7/issues">
    Bugs and feature requests.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Changelog" icon="list" href="https://github.com/l0ng-ai/tty7/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md">
    Everything that shipped, release by release.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>