Arc x Terminal = ArcNext. Built for the Agentic Era.
A terminal emulator that treats shells the way Arc treats tabs — workspaces, split panes, and a fully integrated browser side by side. One app for everything you need while coding with AI agents.
See the original motivation and Karpathy's take on the shift.
Vertical sidebar with Arc-style tabs. Drag to merge, color-code, pin, sleep.
On launch, ArcNext opens to an empty space with the sidebar visible. Use Cmd+T or + New Workspace to create the first tab, while pinned workspaces stay listed dormant until selected.
Right-click any workspace to rename it manually or generate a contextual AI name from the current session.
Use Group on the sidebar divider to organize unpinned workspaces by terminal project or browser app, with separate groups for apps like Gmail, Google Docs, and GitHub. Each group header can close all workspaces in that group.
Terminals and browser views side by side in any layout.
Dock any web page next to your terminals. Links open in-app. Undock back to a standalone window anytime. ArcNext keeps its embedded Chromium current so modern sites and Cloudflare/Turnstile checks are less likely to break in-app. ArcNext downloads save to your macOS Downloads folder. The sidebar download tray shows the four most recent items from Downloads on hover, with thumbnails and quick open or Finder actions. On macOS, packaged builds advertise HTTP, HTTPS, HTML, and XHTML handling so ArcNext can appear in System Settings as a selectable default browser. You can also make ArcNext the default from Settings → General. Incoming links open as browser workspaces.
Agents running in an ArcNext terminal pane can observe and drive any open browser pane through the arcnext-bridge CLI — snapshot the page, click, type, navigate. Presence is detected via the ARCNEXT_BRIDGE_SOCK env var, and the pane glows sky-blue while an agent is acting so you can watch and interrupt.
arcnext-bridge open <url> creates a new browser workspace in the background by default, so agents can open pages without stealing your current workspace. Use arcnext-bridge open <url> --foreground when you do want it to switch you to the new page.
For example, ask Claude Code to "like the top post on my LinkedIn feed" and it'll open the page, snapshot it, and click the right button for you. See arcnext-bridge --help for the full command list.
Frecency-powered picker with ghost text autocomplete. Search your directory and web history, Enter to go. When a directory is selected, press Tab to switch into an Arc-style "Run in…" mode, type an initial shell command, then press Enter to open that folder and run it. Run-mode suggestions come from your shell history, so long agent commands can be reused without retyping.
Electron 41 · React 19 · TypeScript · xterm.js 6 (WebGL) · node-pty · Zustand 5 · electron-vite
npm install
npm run dev # development
npm run package # production DMG (signed + notarized)A few features shell out to external CLIs that aren't bundled with ArcNext. The app works without them — those features just stay dark until you install the tool.
| Feature | Requires | Install |
|---|---|---|
| XNext sidebar (X/Twitter feed + compose, disabled by default) | xcli |
github.com/armantsaturian/xcli |
| AI Rename (workspace auto-naming) and browser "Summarize URL" | summarize |
github.com/steipete/summarize |
After installing, make sure the CLI is on your PATH (or, for xcli, available at ~/.pyenv/shims/xcli). Restart ArcNext to pick it up. Enable XNext in Settings → Extensions when you want the sidebar feed.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Cmd+T |
New tab picker |
Tab in Cmd+T on a directory |
Type an initial command to run in that directory |
Cmd+D / Cmd+Shift+D |
Split right / down |
Cmd+W |
Close pane |
Cmd+B |
Toggle sidebar |
Cmd+1-9 |
Switch workspace |
Opt+Cmd+Arrows |
Navigate panes |
MIT