Most developer UIs treat terminals and agent sessions as ephemeral tabs or panes, which buries long-running work and breaks spatial context. nodeterm flips that model: terminals and agents are first-class, persistent nodes on an infinite canvas so you can arrange, group, and visually track parallel workstreams across restarts and devices.
What Sets It Apart
- Persistent tmux-backed sessions: nodes map to real tmux sessions that survive app restarts and machine reboots, so long-running processes and scrollback are preserved instead of lost in transient tabs. This reduces accidental context loss for background tasks and agents.
- Agent-aware UX and orchestration hooks: agents (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, custom CLIs) surface RUNNING / NEEDS YOU states, permission prompts, and live transcripts; agents can be linked as context and even drive canvas actions via a CLI, turning the canvas into a lightweight mission control for multi-agent workflows.
- Two-surface model (canvas + kanban) and mobile continuity: every project is both an infinite canvas and a Trello-style board of live sessions, and a paired iOS app or Server Edition lets the exact same live tmux sessions be accessed from a phone or browser with end-to-end encrypted relay, enabling on-the-go monitoring and input.
- Remote-first transports and source-control integration: Local and remote (SSH) projects present the same canvas UI, with git worktree binding, file/editor panels, and GitHub issue cards mapped to the kanban — useful when agents or builds must run on remote hosts but you want a single local control surface.
Who It's For and Trade-offs
Great fit if you juggle multiple long-running shells or AI agents across repos and machines and prefer spatial organization over stacked tabs — e.g., researchers running parallel experiments, devs coordinating agent-backed tasks, or engineers monitoring remote CI/agents. It’s especially useful when visual grouping, session continuity, and mobile/remote oversight matter.
Look elsewhere if you need a minimal terminal emulator or a lightweight tabbed terminal: nodeterm is an Electron app with additional overhead and opinionated features (canvas, kanban, built-in tmux). Also, while the Server Edition enables remote access, self-hosting introduces the usual operational considerations (service management, updates, and secrets handling). The project uses a BUSL-1.1 license (be mindful of the Additional Use Grant if you plan to offer a competing hosted service).
