Show HN: A terminal where AI coding CLIs can mention each other

SHIKISHA-TERM, a terminal application from developer styleio, launched on the Microsoft Store and GitHub Releases, letting multiple AI coding CLIs run in one window and hand work to each other via @mentions. The tool supports Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Aider, DeepSeek, Ollama, LM Studio and OpenRouter, runs agents locally or on cloud MicroVMs, and can be steered from a phone via QR code; it stores no API keys and uses existing AI subscriptions. Linux builds ship as a headless component reachable from a browser or phone, with Debian/Ubuntu and Fedora/RHEL packages plus a static binary.

Run many AI agents at once and let them @mention each other for help — on your PC, in the cloud, or from your phone. For Windows, from the Microsoft Store or as a portable zip. Uses the AI subscriptions you already have. Works with Claude Code · Codex · Gemini CLI · Aider · OpenAI · Anthropic · DeepSeek · Mistral · OpenRouter · Ollama · LM Studio — or any shell over SSH <sub ⭐ If this is useful, a star helps other people find it.</sub @mention one agent from another, like in a chat app. “Build this feature, ask @codex to review it, and loop until there is nothing left to fix.” That one line starts the write-and-review loop. No more being the copy-paste courier. Check on your AI from your phone — and tell it to carry on. Scan a QR code and you can see what every tab is doing and send instructions, from the train, from a café, from bed. Running one terminal AI is easy. Running four is not. You end up with a window per agent, no idea which one is waiting for you, and a lot of copy-pasting between them. SHIKISHA-TERM puts them in one window and knows the difference between working , finished and waiting for a human . Agents hand work to each other with an @ mention and read the answer back. They can run on your PC or on a cloud MicroVM, and you can steer them from your phone. It talks to whatever runs in a terminal, so it is not tied to one vendor: Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, DeepSeek, Ollama, Aider, or a plain shell over SSH. Most AI terminals run a single agent. This one runs several — on your PC or in the cloud. For example: - “Ask @codex to review it, and loop until it is clean” — one line, and two agents go back and forth. - Four agents on four branches , each in a worktree of its own, all in one window. - An agent in YOLO mode on a cloud MicroVM , sealed off from your PC. - An AI that opens your dev server in the built-in browser and debugs it on its own. - Kick off a long job and check on it from your phone on the way home — and tell it to carry on. From the Microsoft Store — get it here https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9PB8XQVM87Z0 . Microsoft signs the Store copy, so there is no security warning to click past, and updates arrive on their own. Or take the portable copy , if you would rather nothing were installed: 1. Download SHIKISHA-TERM.zip from Releases https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/releases/latest 2. Unzip it anywhere — a USB stick and a synced folder both work 3. Run SHIKISHA-TERM.exe It opens a window of its own. Nothing needs to be running it — no terminal to set up, no font or colour scheme to get right first. Nothing is written outside that folder. There is no installer and no runtime to install. It uses your existing AI subscriptions through their CLIs. No API keys are stored, and none are needed. There is no window on Linux. What runs there is the part that does the work — it opens the terminals, watches what each agent is doing, runs your automation — and you reach it from a browser or a phone. Put it on a VPS or a cloud VM and the agents keep going when your laptop is shut. Debian / Ubuntu curl -fsSL https://pkg.shikisha-term.com/shikisha-archive-key.asc \ | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/shikisha.asc /dev/null echo "deb signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/shikisha.asc https://pkg.shikisha-term.com/apt stable main" \ | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/shikisha.list sudo apt update && sudo apt install shikisha Fedora / RHEL / openSUSE python sudo rpm --import https://pkg.shikisha-term.com/shikisha-archive-key.asc sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/shikisha.repo <<'REPO' shikisha name=SHIKISHA-TERM baseurl=https://pkg.shikisha-term.com/rpm enabled=1 gpgcheck=1 repo gpgcheck=1 gpgkey=https://pkg.shikisha-term.com/shikisha-archive-key.asc REPO sudo dnf install shikisha Anything else — one static binary, into your own home folder, asking for nothing: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/main/packaging/linux/install.sh | sh Installing does not start anything. When you want it running: systemctl --user enable --now shikisha loginctl enable-linger "$USER" keep it running after you log out It prints the address to open the board at. Everything is signed with one key https://pkg.shikisha-term.com/shikisha-archive-key.asc , and every route above checks it before installing. The Store copy is signed by Microsoft and shows no warning. This section is about the zip only. The zip carries no code-signing certificate, so the first run of an unzipped copy shows "Windows protected your PC" code signing policy https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/SIGNING.md . Click More info → Run anyway to continue. You can help make that warning go away. Removing it means a certificate, and SignPath Foundation https://signpath.org/ issues them to open source projects for free — but for a program like this one they ask for "a certain verifiable reputation" before putting their own name behind it. For a project on GitHub the most legible form that reputation takes is stars. So if this is useful to you, star the repository https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm — it takes a second, and it is the thing most likely to get a signed build into the hands of whoever downloads the zip after you. If you would rather check the download first — and being wary of an unsigned executable from the internet is the right instinct: - Every release is built by GitHub Actions https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/.github/workflows/release.yml from this source, not on anyone's laptop. The build log for your download is public - A SHIKISHA-TERM.zip.sha256 is published next to the zip: Get-FileHash SHIKISHA-TERM.zip -Algorithm SHA256 The first run opens Getting set up . Pick your main AI from the ones installed on this PC and check GitHub CLI; an AI you do not have yet opens its install page right there. Then the screen points you to add a project : pick a folder or clone from a Git URL onto a MicroVM or an SSH server too . Press where it points next, and the AI starts in that folder — no JSON editing required. To open just the settings also the way back in if a broken config stops the app from starting , double-click Settings.cmd . - Call one with @ , like in chat — type @ in the input bar to list this desk's tabs; a pick becomes a chip. The agent in front hands the work over, reads the answer and carries on - Review loops — “ask @codex to review it, and loop until there is nothing left to fix” runs the back-and-forth. The app counts the rounds, up to the limit under Settings “Limits on handing work” - Terminals and pages too — run a command in a named terminal, or give a named web page a goal in plain words. Only the tabs a person named with @ can be driven - Nobody waits on a long job — its answer comes back to the tab that asked when it is done - Tabs with real status — every tab shows whether it is working, done, or waiting for you, detected from the screen itself rather than from any vendor API - Split panes — split as many ways as you like: agents side by side, or an agent next to the browser it is driving - Worktrees — a folder of its own for every branch, so several branches move at once - Pick up where you left off — close the app and resume the conversation Claude Code, Codex - Notifications — Slack / Discord / Telegram, this PC, or your phone when a job finishes - A machine of its own — clone the project onto a cloud MicroVM E2B and run the agents there. Whatever they do never reaches your PC, which makes it the place for YOLO mode - Set up once — every worktree is a copy of the project's machine, so what you installed and signed in to is already there - Pauses when idle — it keeps everything and picks up where it stopped when its URL or a webhook is called - The token stays outside — the git server's token is added on the way out, so no agent inside can read it - Previews by URL — open what the machine serves by URL, unlisted or private - Browser — open pages inside the app and let an AI drive and check them. A dev server's port opens in a browser tab too - Git panel — stage part of a diff, let an AI write the commit message, and let an AI tab work through a conflict - SFTP — this PC on the left, the server on the right; send and fetch files - A real terminal — SSH, Docker, WSL, jump hosts, key files, port forwarding, session logs, legacy encodings, IME input and mouse support - Scan a QR code to see every tab and send instructions. Everything you can do at the PC, you can do from the phone see below - Desks — swap the whole tab layout per project, like virtual desktops. Export one to a single file, automation scripts included, and hand it to another machine or person - Automation — "when this finishes, hand the result to the review tab", "answer this confirmation automatically". Written in Lua, or described in plain language and written for you by an AI you already have installed - Runaway protection — a limit on how many times agents may hand work to each other, an emergency stop, and per-tab input locks Turn on "Use from your phone" in the settings and a QR code appears. Scan it and you get a small web page listing every tab, its status, and a box to send instructions. Ctrl+B 0 then i shows the same code on the board. Under the code sit the only two things worth acting on. 📋 copies the link — token and all — to the clipboard, for a phone that cannot photograph the screen it is on, and the badge beside it says which network that link leads to : green for Tailscale your own devices, anywhere , amber for the home LAN everyone on that Wi-Fi . The link itself is never printed: with its token it is the key to the machine, and without one it opens nothing. Know where it is reachable from — this feature lets a phone run commands on your machine: - Only people on the same network can connect. It is never published to the internet - With Tailscale https://tailscale.com/ free only your own devices can reach it, encrypted, from anywhere. This is the safest way and the one to prefer - Without Tailscale it works on your home LAN only . Anyone on the same Wi-Fi who knows the URL and the token could use it — do not turn it on for shared or public Wi-Fi - Binding to a public address remote.allow public never happens unless you write it in the config file yourself See SECURITY.md https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/SECURITY.md for the full threat model. The prefix is Ctrl+B , tmux-style. Ctrl+B ? opens the help. | Key | Action | |---|---| | Ctrl+B q | Quit | | Ctrl+B 0 – 9 | Switch tab 0 = INDEX | | Ctrl+B w / W | Desk list / next | | Ctrl+B % / " | Split the view beside / below < resize | | Ctrl+B o / arrows | Move between panes | | Ctrl+B X | Close this pane the tab keeps running | | Ctrl+B = | Put every divider back to even halves | | Ctrl+B l | Toggle input lock | | Ctrl+B r / R | Restart the tab, carrying its conversation over / starting a new one. On a tab you have not spoken to yet, it picks up the conversation from the last run of the app | | Ctrl+B | Copy mode c copies the latest response . / searches the history, n / N step through the matches | | Ctrl+B a / x | Automation on/off / emergency stop | | Ctrl+B 0 → i | Show the QR code for phone access | | Ctrl+B 0 → k | Set or change the master password encrypts secrets.json | An on notify automation hook catches every terminal notification bell/OSC, even over ssh , so you can forward it to your phone or route it — see docs/AUTOMATION.md. browser snapshot captures a browser page as a PNG see it under Settings → Snapshots — a rally can keep a visual record of what it did. Ctrl+B : opens a command palette — one box to find and run anything: a tab, a setting, the Vault, any key action, your own quick actions. The board's "Find" searches both the live output of every open tab and every conversation the AI CLIs have recorded, by what was said in them, and reopening one adds a tab that resumes it in its folder. The board's SESSIONS table shows a COST column — processor and memory per agent, summed over everything it started — so you can see which of several running agents is heavy without leaving the terminal. A browser login can be saved once browser state save and reloaded by a later rally browser state load , so a rally does not start by logging in. It saves our own browser profile's cookies, httpOnly and all; it does not crack Chrome's or Firefox's stores. Each tab says where it is, under its name: the branch, its pull request, and any ports it is listening on. Pull request numbers use the GitHub sign-in already on this PC gh auth login , or GITHUB TOKEN ; without one the rest still shows. Every key can be moved, including the prefix — the settings list each action with the key it answers to now, and the help screen Ctrl+B ? shows what you actually have rather than what shipped. Colours are chosen in the settings, by name. The list is every scheme this PC already has — whatever Windows Terminal is carrying, plus any scheme file you drop into config/themes , in the format colour schemes are published in. Pick a light one and the whole window follows, not only the terminal. The mouse works too: wheel to scroll, Ctrl+wheel to change the terminal's size , drag to copy, right click to paste, click a tab name to switch. Once the window is divided, each pane's caption carries ▥ and ▤ to divide it again and ✕ to close that view, and the divider between panes can be dragged to rebalance them — double-click it for even halves. The tab bar on the left works the same way: drag its right edge to set its width, double-click for the width it ships with, and drag it shut to put it away and give the whole window to the terminal. Ctrl+B s does that too, and brings it back the width it was. An automation is a few lines of Lua dropped into a folder, named after the moment it should run: -- on done.lua — hand the finished work to the review tab, and stop after 5 rounds if tab.chain depth == 0 then return end -- a human started this; do nothing local rounds = shikisha.get var "rounds" or 0 if tab.output:match "LGTM" or rounds = 5 then shikisha.notify "slack", "Review finished " .. rounds .. " rounds " return end shikisha.set var "rounds", rounds + 1 shikisha.send to tab "reviewer", "Please fix these points:\n" .. tab.output An agent can also say what it is doing — shikisha.set status "build", "running tests" puts that under its name in the tab bar, beside the state dot that is read off its screen. One is what we could tell; the other is what it chose to say. Automations run in a sandbox: no file access and no network by default , and notifications can only go to targets you registered. The same commands can be called from outside the app , over a named pipe, by anything this app started — so a CLI sitting in a tab can split a pane, drive the browser, or hand work to another tab without a human at the keyboard. Same names as in Lua, nothing new to learn. See section 7 of the reference. Full reference: docs/AUTOMATION.md https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/docs/AUTOMATION.md — also reachable from the settings screen. SHIKISHA-TERM.exe the app Settings.cmd opens only the settings screen config.json general settings + the list of desks secrets.json notification targets and tokens encryptable, never share desks/ desk definitions shareable per project profiles/ per-AI status detection rules scripts/ automation scripts logs/ session and automation logs lang/ interface languages en.json is the base docs/AUTOMATION.md how to write automations Copy config.example.json and the other .example.json files to get started. The interface follows your Windows language and falls back to English. You can also set it in the settings screen or with "language" in config.json . | Language | Status | |---|---| | English | ✅ base | | 日本語 | ✅ complete | | your language | contributions welcome https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/docs/TRANSLATING.md | Copy lang/en.json to lang/<code .json and translate the values — that is the whole process. Keys you leave out fall back to English, so a partial translation still works. See docs/TRANSLATING.md https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/docs/TRANSLATING.md . It is deliberately narrow, and honest about it: - Windows only today. It is built on ConPTY; other platforms are not supported yet — ★ star the repo https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm to hear if that changes - It drives CLIs, it does not replace them. Your AI subscriptions, logins and settings stay exactly as they are - It is a terminal, not an IDE. It manages sessions and moves text between them Translations, profiles for AI CLIs it does not know yet, bug reports — all welcome. Start with CONTRIBUTING.md https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md , and please keep to the Code of Conduct https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/CODE OF CONDUCT.md . Questions or ideas? Open a Discussion https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/discussions . cargo build --release Rust MSVC toolchain is required. The result is a single executable with no runtime dependencies. - Automation reference https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/docs/AUTOMATION.md — events, variables, commands, examples - Translating https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/docs/TRANSLATING.md — how to add a language - Design notes https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/DESIGN.md — terminology, architecture, and the safety model 日本語 https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/DESIGN.ja.md - Security https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/SECURITY.md — threat model and how to report an issue - Code signing policy https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/SIGNING.md — how release binaries are built and signed If SHIKISHA-TERM saves you time, you can support its development on Ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/styleio . Thank you. The program is built from open source components, and the terms of every one of them are reproduced in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt https://github.com/styleio/ShikishaTerm/blob/main/THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt , which is inside the download as well as here.