Show HN: I built a transparent terminal wrapper for unobtrusive AI

Developer Emilio Senkis released Terminai, a transparent terminal wrapper that lets users keep AI assistants like Claude and Codex in the background for on-demand help with shell commands and output analysis. The tool, built on mprocs and forked from ratatui to preserve native scrollback and clipboard functionality, is available via Homebrew for Mac and Linux. Senkis built Terminai because existing coding agents put AI in the driver's seat, whereas Terminai keeps the user in control.

I wanted a way to use my existing AI subscriptions as a terminal assistant to analyze shell output or help me with a complicated awk incantation from time to time without getting in my way the rest of the time. I couldn't find anything existing that does this do I built it I used pvolok's excellent mprocs as a starting point and leaned heavily on Claude and Codex for coding all but the gnarliest parts while providing extensive guidance on how it should be implemented. I know that coding agents can run shell commands already but that puts the AI in the driver's seat. Terminai let's me be the driver, with codex or claude or any other agent sitting quietly in the backseat until I want its help. The hardest part was making it truly transparent. Most TUIs that embed a terminal break the terminal emulator's native scrollback and frequently also break copying to the clipboard. I worked hard to make sure that that both of these work exactly as they would without terminai. Along the way I had to fork ratatui to change the way it renders in order to get both of these behaviors working. Tested on Mac and Linux as my daily driver and on Windows enough to see that it works. Quick install: brew install emosenkis/tap/terminai Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49058883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49058883 Points: 1 Comments: 0