Cogno

The terminal, without the extra work.

Cogno is a terminal for modern developers. It remembers commands, keeps projects organized, and gives you familiar shortcuts out of the box. Less mental load. More doing.

Cogno is local-first, open source, and built to stay close to the way you already work. It runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS with PowerShell, Bash, and Zsh.

Highlights

• Context-aware command suggestions based on command history, current directory, and project context
• 1000+ CLI integrations, powered entirely on-device
• Editor-like input behavior with familiar shortcuts for cursor movement, selection, and replacement
• Live detection and status of running coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, and more) shown in the tab and side panel, with notifications
• Reusable workspaces with saved tabs, panes, and project layouts
• Notifications for long-running commands, including OSC 9 support
• Search and filtering for the current command output or the full terminal buffer
• Fast command palette for actions
• Windows, Linux, and macOS support
• PowerShell, Bash, and Zsh support
• Process information for active shells and commands
• CLI access for automation and scripting
• Single self-contained binary, typically under 40 MB

Why Cogno?

Terminal work is where development, debugging, deployment, and automation happen, but the experience often comes with unnecessary repetition: hunting for old commands, rebuilding pane layouts, scrolling through noisy output, or losing track of what a coding agent is doing.

Cogno keeps the speed and flexibility of the shell, then adds the structure that recurring work benefits from: command memory, workspace persistence, editor-like input, focused search, and coding-agent awareness directly in the terminal.

The project is actively shaped as a community-friendly terminal workspace. Feedback, issue reports, ideas, and focused contributions are welcome.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup, checks, and contribution guidelines. Please also read the Code of Conduct before joining project spaces.

Community

• Website: cogno.rocks
• Discord: Join the Cogno Discord
• Reddit: r/cogno
• YouTube: Cogno on YouTube

Quick Start

pnpm install
pnpm dev

For the desktop application, make sure the platform-specific Tauri prerequisites are installed as well.

License

The project source code in this repository is licensed under MPL-2.0, except for src/features, which is licensed under MIT, unless a file or directory contains a different third-party license notice.

Third-party content

• Command specs in src/core/session/autocomplete/spec-command/data are derived from withfig/autocomplete (MIT, © Hercules Labs Inc.); see the LICENSE file in that directory.
• Bundled fonts: Roboto (Apache-2.0) and Comfortaa (OFL-1.1); license files are next to the fonts in src/assets/fonts.

Configuration

Cogno ships with bundled defaults and keeps user overrides small.

That keeps the user config readable while still exposing the full settings surface through:

cogno config show --defaults

User files live in the Cogno home directory:

• ~/.cogno
• in development builds: ~/.cogno-dev

There you will find:

• the user settings
• generated shell integration scripts under shell-integration/
• database file cogno.db

Shell integration over SSH

Cogno authenticates its shell-integration sequences with a per-session secret in COGNO_SESSION_TOKEN. A remote host does not know it, so its output cannot change the session's context. If you install the integration on a host and want it to work through SSH, forward the token explicitly: SendEnv COGNO_SESSION_TOKEN in your ssh_config (and AcceptEnv COGNO_SESSION_TOKEN in the host's sshd_config).

CLI

cogno [--config <path>] [--set key=value ...]
  run
  action
    list
    run <name> [args...]
  config
    show [--defaults]
    get <key>
    path

Examples:

cogno --help
cogno config show --defaults
cogno config get shell.default
cogno action list
cogno action run open_config

Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js
• pnpm
• Rust toolchain
• Tauri prerequisites for your platform

Install

pnpm install

Run

pnpm dev

Useful Commands

pnpm lint          # run code and architecture linting
pnpm typecheck     # run the TypeScript compiler without emitting files
pnpm test          # run the automated test suite
pnpm build         # build the web application for production
pnpm build:desktop # build the desktop application bundle

Repository Layout

The TypeScript code lives in layers under src/, each importing only from the ones below it (enforced by pnpm lint:architecture):

• shared/ framework-free foundation: domain models (domain), pure utilities (support), and generic UI building blocks (ui) — no services, no state, no contracts between core and features
• platform/ the only layer that talks to Tauri: OS, PTY, database, window, and filesystem bindings
• core/ the always-on product — api/ (the protocol with features: contracts only, ports core implements and contributions/ features fulfil), infrastructure/ (config, errors, theme), terminal/ (the xterm machine), command-log/, session/ (shells, model, autocomplete, recorder), and workbench/ (tabs, workspaces, grid, side menu, notifications, and the adapters implementing the api)
• features/ switchable features: command palette, git, terminal search, process info, notification overview, and coding-agent detection
• bootstrap/ the composition root: Angular DI wiring, the feature manifest, and main.ts
• __test__/ shared test helpers, fixtures, and mocks
• assets/ shared styles, icons, fonts, and static assets

Plus src-tauri/ — the native desktop wrapper and Rust-side commands.