Terminals

Loxel’s integrated terminals are full PTY sessions. Open as many as you need, run any CLI tool, and switch worktrees freely — your terminal sessions stay alive and exactly where you left them.

Opening a terminal

Press T to open a new terminal tab. There is no limit on the number of terminals. Like any panel, terminals can be docked, split, or moved anywhere in your layout.

Session persistence

Terminal sessions survive context switches. When you switch to another worktree — or navigate away to a different panel — the underlying PTY process keeps running. Come back and the session is exactly where you left it, scrollback included.

The scrollback buffer is held server-side. Default: 3,000 lines. Adjust it in Settings > Terminal — the valid range is 1,000 to 100,000 lines.

Note: The scrollback setting takes effect for new terminal sessions. Existing sessions retain the buffer size they were started with.

Theme

Terminal colors follow your dark/light mode setting automatically. No manual configuration needed.

Injected environment variables

Every loxel terminal starts with four environment variables already set:

Variable	Value
`LOXEL`	`1`
`LOXEL_PORT`	Port of the running loxel server
`LOXEL_WORKTREE`	Working directory path of this terminal
`LOXEL_WINDOW_ID`	Electron window ID (desktop app only)

LOXEL=1 lets scripts detect they are running inside loxel. LOXEL_PORT and LOXEL_WORKTREE are the more useful ones — they are consumed by the loxel CLI and by TUI agents that want worktree context.

The `loxel` CLI inside a terminal

From any loxel terminal, run loxel with a file path to open that file in the active loxel window:

loxel src/app.ts
loxel src/app.ts:42        # jump to line 42
loxel src/app.ts:42:8      # jump to line 42, column 8

It also accepts URLs:

loxel https://example.com

Because the terminal already has LOXEL_PORT set, the CLI locates the running server instantly — no detection timeout. Outside a loxel terminal, the CLI has to probe for the server; inside one, it connects immediately.

For the full loxel CLI reference, including behavior when no server is running, see Environment Variables & Settings.

TUI agents

Any terminal-based coding agent runs normally in loxel terminals. Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and Gemini CLI all work without special configuration. They inherit LOXEL_WORKTREE, which gives them the current worktree path as immediate context — no need to cd or pass a path manually.

These are distinct from loxel’s built-in coding agent, which has a dedicated timeline UI and runs outside the terminal. If you want the timeline, human interaction overlays, and structured tool calls integrated into your layout, see Coding Agent. If you have an existing TUI agent workflow or want full CLI control, run it in a terminal here.