illogical

A terminal multiplexer whose sessions outlive the window, the daemon and the reboot. A daemon owns your terminals; the browser (desktop or phone) draws tabs and splits you drive with the mouse.

• Mouse first. Click, drag and right-click for tabs and splits. No chords to learn, no prefix key.
• Durable. Close the window, lose the connection, restart the daemon or reboot: the layout, working directories and scrollback come back, and each pane does what you told it to (a shell where it was, re-run its command, claude --continue). On Linux a daemon restart doesn't even touch running programs.
• Anywhere on your tailnet. The same live layout on every window and your phone, over Tailscale. Push notifications when a pane rings, a long command finishes, or an agent needs you.
• Agents as blocks. Claude Code, Codex or any ACP agent as a UI beside your terminals: tool calls with their output, approvals and questions as cards big enough for a thumb.
• Scriptable. illogical, a CLI for scripts and agents: run, send, wait for a command or a match, tail, search every pane's history.

Single user, Linux (x86_64, arm64) and macOS (Apple silicon). Not meant for the open internet: remote access is your tailnet only.

Install

curl -fsSL https://illogical.widgets.wtf/install.sh | sh

This puts illogicald and illogical in ~/.local/bin and starts the daemon as a service (systemd user unit on Linux, launchd agent on macOS). Run it again to upgrade. ILLOGICAL_VERSION=v0.1.0 picks a version.

Homebrew (macOS, Linux):

brew tap jhgaylor/tap https://git.inevitable.fyi/jhgaylor/homebrew-tap
brew install illogical
illogicald install

From source: see docs/development.md.

On Linux, let it start at boot, before you log in:

loginctl enable-linger $USER

Quickstart

1. Open http://127.0.0.1:7681. Right-click a pane or a tab for everything. Drag a tab or a pane onto another pane's edge to split it there; drag dividers to resize.

2. From your phone and other machines, put it behind Tailscale on this machine:

   tailscale serve --bg --https=443 http://127.0.0.1:7681
   

   and open https://<this machine>.<tailnet>.ts.net. Only the Tailscale login that owns the machine gets in (illogicald install -- --owner you@example.com for someone else). On the phone, add it to the home screen, then Notify this device in the session menu.

3. From a script or another pane:

   illogical run --wait -- cargo build        # a new tab; exits with its exit code
   illogical send %3 'git status' -e          # type a line and press Enter
   illogical wait %3 --match 'listening on'
   illogical tail %3 -f --text
   illogical search 'panic|Traceback' --since 1d
   

   docs/cli.md has the rest.

4. Agents. Install an adapter (needs Node), then Start an agent… in a pane's menu, or illogical agent "fix the failing test":

   npm install --prefix ~/.local/share/illogical/agents/claude @agentclientprotocol/claude-agent-acp@0.85.0
   npm install --omit=optional --prefix ~/.local/share/illogical/agents/codex @agentclientprotocol/codex-acp@2.1.0
   

   Claude Code in an ordinary pane can raise the same notifications and question cards with three hooks: see Claude Code hooks.

On macOS

Everything above works, except that restarting or upgrading the daemon ends the panes' programs (there's no systemd to hold them); scrollback and layout still come back. VM tabs are Linux only.

More

• docs/features.md: everything it does, in detail.
• docs/advanced.md: VM tabs (wisp), web apps beside their terminals, more machines and sandboxes, iTerm2 as a tmux client.
• docs/cli.md: the CLI and the HTTP API.
• docs/development.md: building, testing, the code's layout, and what building it taught us.
• BRIEF.md and PLAN.md: why it exists, the decisions and the milestones.

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0, at your option. Terminal emulation by libghostty; see THIRD_PARTY.md.