Your terminal. Your agents. Your whole dev loop.
Terminal, agent, simulator, and browser panes. First-class citizens. One fully native workspace.
Tab combines a terminal multiplexer with an agent development environment (ADE): a workspace for coding agents and the tools you use to run, inspect, and test their changes. Written in Swift and AppKit, with its own background server included.
macOS 14+ · Apple silicon · Free & open source
Four panes. One workspace. Arrange yours your way.
Four panes. Equal footing.
Your shell, your coding agent, and the app you're building belong together. Give each one the space it needs.
| Pane | What you can do |
|---|
| Terminal | Run commands, watch logs, and keep development servers going with the Ghostty terminal engine. Split, resize, and arrange your sessions. |
| Agent | Work with Claude Code or Codex in a native conversation pane. Keep the tools to inspect and test their changes right beside them. |
| Simulator | See your mobile app where you're working. Interact with iOS simulators and Android emulators in their own panes. |
| Browser | Open your local app, a preview, or the docs. Keep the page in view while you change the code that powers it. |
Fully native. Right down to the feel.
Written in Swift. Built with AppKit. Native keyboard shortcuts, flexible split panes, and macOS glass surfaces. A workspace made for the Mac you're using, with the vendored Ghostty terminal engine and no Electron runtime.
One project. As many angles as you need.
- A tab for the task. Give each project or Git worktree its own sidebar tab. Arrange panes inside it. Keep parallel tasks separate, with files and Git diffs close at hand.
- Your agents. Your way of working. Use your installed and authenticated Claude Code or Codex CLI in native agent panes. Prefer another CLI agent? Run it in a terminal pane.
- Local feel. Remote Mac. Connect to another Mac over SSH. Work with its projects, terminals, and simulators. Browser pages travel through the server's tunnels, so
localhost stays with the workspace.
Close the app. Keep your terminals running.
Tab's own background server, tabd, owns your terminal sessions and workspace state. Quit the desktop app, come back later, and reconnect to your work.
The Mac running your workspace needs to stay awake. Closing a terminal pane ends that session.
The native desktop app, tab command-line tool, and tabd server ship together in one Mac app bundle.
Get Tab
- Download the latest DMG for macOS 14+ on Apple silicon.
- Drag Tab into Applications.
- Open a project. Make it yours.
Native agent conversations use an installed, authenticated Claude Code or Codex CLI on the Mac running your workspace. Tab is free and open source; agent-provider accounts and fees are separate. iOS simulators need Xcode and a simulator runtime; Android emulators need the Android SDK and an emulator.
Build from source
You'll need Xcode's Swift 6 toolchain and Zig 0.17 to build the vendored terminal framework. Build GhosttyVT once, then validate the app:
scripts/build-ghostty.sh
scripts/validate.sh
Validation builds with warnings as errors, runs the tests, and creates build/debug/Tab Dev.app. For a faster iteration, use swift build. To bundle and launch the development app with this checkout's profile:
scripts/run-dev.sh
See AGENTS.md for architecture and contribution rules, scripts/release.sh for release packaging, and website/README.md for the website and GitHub Pages setup.
License
MIT © Hugo Corta
