Micold AI IDE
Run several AI coding agents side by side, each in its own git worktree, in one native desktop app.
Micold gives every line of work its own branch, worktree and real terminal, and keeps the agent
session running in the background — close the window, or crash it, and the sessions are still there
when you come back.
- Any agent, your choice per session — Claude Code,
GitHub Copilot CLI,
Pi Coding Agent, Codex or
OpenCode. Mix them in the same project.
- One worktree per task — start from a new branch or pick up an existing one; parallel agents
never trample each other's files.
- Sessions that survive — a background session service owns the terminals; the window just
attaches.
- Sandboxable — run the session service in a container so agents see only the projects and
credentials you allow.
- Native and local-first — Rust and iced, no Electron, no account;
all state stays on your machine and the app is fully functional offline.
Documentation: https://jaroslawherod.github.io/micold-ai-ide/ — the user guide with
screenshots of the running application, published from this repository on every release.
Features
- Open a git project and manage its worktrees (one branch per line of work) from a Material
Design sidebar — on a new branch, or on one that already exists locally or on a remote, so work
started outside the app can be picked up inside it.
- Run multiple concurrent AI CLI sessions —
claude, copilot, pi, codex or opencode — each in its own worktree
or directly in the project root ("Default"), in an embedded terminal. Each session remembers which
CLI it runs, and they can run side by side in the same project.
- A real terminal emulator: full ANSI color + text styling, live keyboard and mouse input,
focus-gated key routing, resize, scrollback, and copy/paste.
- Light/dark theming that follows your OS preference; configurable terminal scrollback.
- Sessions run in a background session service, so they survive closing — or crashing — the
window, and reattach instantly when it comes back.
- That service can run in a container instead of directly on your computer: it then sees only
the projects you registered and the credentials you allowed, under limits you set. See
Running the session service in a container.
Download
Prebuilt packages for every release are on the
releases page:
| Platform | Package |
|---|
| Debian, Ubuntu | .deb (amd64, arm64) — sudo apt install ./micold-client_*.deb |
| Fedora, RHEL, openSUSE | .rpm (x86_64, aarch64) |
| macOS | .dmg (universal) |
| Windows | -setup.exe (x64, arm64) |
Then run micold-ai-ide and open a git project; you also need at least one agent CLI
(for example claude) on your PATH. Step-by-step guides:
installing.
Build from source
mise run run # run the GUI client (it spawns or attaches the session daemon itself)
mise run test # test the whole workspace, as CI does
mise run test-core # test only the render-free core — no GUI, much faster
The workspace is three crates: micold-core (render-free logic and the wire protocol),
micold-client (the iced GUI) and micold-daemon (the session service). mise.toml holds the
canonical commands; a first run in a fresh clone needs mise trust once.
Linux build/runtime needs the usual GUI dev libraries (X11/Wayland/xkbcommon); see
.github/workflows/ci.yml for the exact package list.
Documentation
The published site is https://jaroslawherod.github.io/micold-ai-ide/: the same documentation
this repository carries, at the latest release, with the screenshots captured from that release's
own build.
The sources are here, and are what a pull request edits — the site is built from them, never the
other way round: docs/README.md, including
installing on macOS,
the session service and
running it in a container.
How the site is built and published: docs/development/docs-site.md.
Changes: CHANGELOG.md
(maintained by release-please and embedded in the app).
Releases
Releases are automated with release-please from
Conventional Commits. Each release publishes Debian
packages (.deb) for amd64 and arm64, a macOS disk image
(MicoldAIIDE-<version>-universal.dmg) that runs natively on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs,
and republishes the documentation site above.
Downloading the macOS build? Its first launch is blocked: macOS says it "could not verify" the
application, because the project has no Apple Developer account to sign it with. This is expected.
Click Done, then open System Settings › Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway. That
is the whole thing — once, in System Settings, no terminal — and every launch afterwards is silent.
Installing on macOS walks through it.
License
Apache-2.0.
