Most "AI terminals" bolt a chat panel onto an existing terminal. aitm is built the other direction: a tool-calling LLM is a first-class participant in the shell, with bounded access to your files, history, and processes — and every action passes through a 4-layer safety gate.
The terminal stays the workspace. The AI is a colleague in it, not a sidebar.
aitm is built with Tauri 2, Rust, and React 19. The release binary is 5.3 MB and starts in 3–5 ms.
No Electron. No web view stuffed with Node. The shell is real Rust talking to real PTYs through a 64 KB ring buffer. The UI is React rendered into a native WKWebView. Cold start is bound by macOS app launch, not by JavaScript.
The AI calls actual tools — read_file, list_files, get_terminal_history, search_history, run_command — and feeds the results back to itself in a bounded loop. Output is stripped of ANSI control sequences before the model sees it, so the model isn't reasoning about cursor escapes.
HIGH-risk actions (anything mutating, anything reaching the network) require explicit user approval. LOW-risk reads happen silently. The four layers — blocklist regex, heuristic risk scoring, allowlist with metachar protection, and user confirmation — are independent: any one of them can stop a runaway agent.
Six providers out of the box: OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, Qwen (DashScope domestic + international), Zhipu, Moonshot. Bring your own API key. aitm holds nothing.
Run aitm init in a project directory to set a boundary. The AI's file tools stay inside it. A MEMORY.md at the root or ~/.aitm/MEMORY.md globally is auto-injected into the system prompt.
# Download the latest dmg
open https://github.com/kanfu-panda/aitm/releases/latestaitm is signed and notarized by Apple. Drag aitm.app into Applications and launch.
brew install --cask kanfu-panda/tap/aitmgit clone https://github.com/kanfu-panda/aitm.git
cd aitm
pnpm install
pnpm tauri devRequires Rust (pinned in rust-toolchain.toml), pnpm 10.x, and macOS.
aitm 1.0 ships the core experience: terminal, AI loop, safety, project scope. Beyond 1.0:
- Keychain-backed API key storage
- First-class Windows support
- Plugin system for custom tools
- Linux build
- L2 risk scoring extensibility
Status updates land in CHANGELOG.md.
- User guide — installation, configuration, AI providers
- Architecture — internals, IPC layer, tool loop
- Contributing — development setup, conventions
- Privacy — what aitm sends home (anonymous usage stats only, opt-out at any time)
Issues and pull requests are welcome. For non-trivial changes, open an issue first to discuss the direction — both because aitm has architectural opinions worth aligning on, and because bandwidth for review is finite.
# Run the full test suite
cd src-tauri && cargo test -p aitm
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings
cd .. && pnpm typecheck && pnpm lint && pnpm test
pnpm exec playwright testAll gates must pass before merging to main.
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