microsoft/intelligent-terminal v0.3

Intelligent Terminal v0.3.3083.0

on GitHub

This is the biggest update to Intelligent Terminal since we launched. We wanted a richer, easier-to-read experience for working with agents, and we heard that the classic tab bar needed more room for the context agent workflows bring. The new sidebar puts tabs, split panes, live agent status, and recent agent sessions in one place. Headless mode keeps selected tabs running after you close their tab or window, automatically created agent CLI profiles launch your installed agents directly, and Google Antigravity joins the supported agents. Better draft editing, Markdown replies, more reliable session restoration, and smoother navigation make everyday agent workflows easier to follow.

See the blog here: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/intelligent-terminal-v0-3-a-new-way-to-see-and-manage-your-tabs-and-agents/

Highlights

1. See your terminal and agent work in one sidebar. Browse expandable split-pane groups, search tabs and recent agent sessions, and spot agents that are working or need input without visiting every tab. #993, #1007, #1097
2. Close the window without stopping your work. Turn on headless mode for a tab to keep its shells and agent panes alive, then restore the running tab from the system tray. #998, #1107
3. Launch agent CLIs like any other terminal profile. Installed Copilot, Claude, Codex, Gemini, OpenCode, and Antigravity CLIs appear in the new tab menu and run their own interactive interfaces directly. #1102, #1123
4. Use Google Antigravity in the Agent Pane or as a native CLI. Windows and WSL Agent Pane integration includes browser-based sign-in and on-demand preparation of its separate ACP dependency. #995, #1155, #1173
5. Write and read more naturally in the Agent Pane. Undo and redo draft edits, click to position the caret, paste screenshots with normal Paste, and read completed responses as Markdown. #923, #968, #1103, #1146

Features and Improvements

Sidebar and navigation

1. Switch between horizontal tabs and a collapsible sidebar without restarting. Right-click a tab and select Switch to horizontal tabs, or change the layout in Settings. Expand split tabs into individual pane rows to focus or close the pane you want while keeping the group together. Acrylic theming is on by default for the sidebar; turn off Use acrylic material in the tab row under Settings > Appearance for a solid background. #993, #1007
2. Keep recent agent sessions beside your open tabs. Recent agent sessions shows titles, working directories, activity, and age, with indicators for sessions in another window or running in the background. Selecting a session focuses its known live pane, restores its retained tab, or starts a supported resume flow. #1010, #1101, #1109
3. Choose what the sidebar displays. Independent Agents only and Recent agent sessions options persist across windows and restarts. Recent sessions are enabled by default when no explicit preference exists; an existing opt-out is respected. #1097, #1133, #1211
4. Search across tabs, panes, metadata, and recent agent sessions. Sidebar search looks through open tabs and recent sessions in one go, including items outside the current display filters; clearing it restores your chosen scope. Press Ctrl+F for sidebar search or the existing horizontal tab-search palette, depending on your layout. #1044, #1097, #1198
5. Navigate the sidebar from the keyboard. Use Ctrl+Shift+S to enter or toggle the sidebar, Ctrl+Alt+Up/Down to cycle through displayed open tabs, Ctrl+Shift+G for Agents only, and Ctrl+Shift+/ for recent sessions. Tab and arrow navigation can move keyboard focus without activating another terminal; Enter activates the chosen row. Display-option shortcuts also work while their menu is open. #1062, #1198, #1208, #1212
6. Put useful context beneath tab titles. Choose up to two rich tab metadata fields, including agent status, working directory, Git repository, branch, and changes, so you can distinguish similar workspaces at a glance. #1018, #1025, #1033
7. Pin important tabs ahead of the rest. Pin indicators and ordering work in horizontal and sidebar layouts and survive live whole-tab moves. Pinning does not prevent closing a tab, and pin state resets when the app restarts. #1052
8. Read activity without extra icon clutter. Progress and attention indicators share the leading profile or provider icon slot; clearing an attention indicator restores ongoing progress or the current identity. Full-title tooltips appear beside sidebar rows rather than covering neighboring items. #1118, #1128, #1147, #1222

Sessions and terminal workflows

1. Keep an entire tab running with headless mode. In a sidebar tab's context menu, choose Turn on headless mode before closing the tab or window. All its existing panes stay alive, and the tab appears in the sidebar and system tray. System-tray actions restore or close retained tabs, including Close all keep-running tabs. This is live-process retention, not survival across an app exit or reboot. #998, #1035, #1107
2. Restore a more complete workspace after restarting. With layout restoration enabled, the startup snapshot includes the last visible layout and detached background tabs, including tabs from previously closed windows. Restarting reconstructs supported layouts and conversations; it does not preserve the old processes. #1092
3. Resume sessions marked In use when you choose to. Intelligent Terminal no longer blocks the request solely because another client appears to be using the conversation; the agent CLI decides whether it can resume and how to handle concurrent access. #1156
4. Show useful activity even with Sessions switched off. Supported Terminal-created native agents can report progress and attention through terminal signals. This does not automatically adopt arbitrary manually launched sessions or add resume support for custom providers. #1140
5. Create agent-requested workspaces with the profile you actually named. Agents can query available runtime profiles before creating a workspace, including generated agent profiles, rather than guessing or silently substituting the default shell. #1219
6. Recognize more PowerShell resume commands for saved layouts. Quoted literal session IDs, additional CLI options, and supported Antigravity resume forms can establish a conversation binding before its first message, even without agent hooks. Bash, WSL, and CMD parsing are unchanged. #1122

Coding agents and setup

1. Open installed agent CLIs from the new tab menu. Automatically detected Windows profiles launch Copilot, Claude, Codex, Gemini, OpenCode, and Antigravity directly, independently of Agent Pane ACP connections. Edit or copy their profiles, choose a model or supported startup arguments, or supply your own command line. WSL installations are not automatically generated as native profiles. #1102, #1123
2. Find generated agent profiles in their own new tab menu group. Ordinary shell profiles appear first, followed by installed agent profiles with theme-aware icons. Custom new tab menu layouts remain unchanged, and the internal Agent Pane helper is hidden from the dropdown customization picker. #1123, #1214, #1221
3. Connect Antigravity on Windows or WSL with guided sign-in. Authorize in your browser from the Agent Pane, with open/copy-link actions if automatic browser launch is unavailable. When you select a detected CLI installation, Intelligent Terminal can prepare its separate ACP dependency on demand; background sidebar discovery does not automatically prepare or launch it. #995, #1129, #1155, #1173
4. Get clearer startup failures instead of endless reconnect attempts. Agent startup uses bounded automatic retries and explicit retry controls, while Settings exposes selectable, copyable diagnostic details and keeps an installed provider selectable after a startup failure. Antigravity can still encounter upstream DLL-loading failures on some enterprise Windows systems. #1180
5. Use OpenCode V1 or V2 with the matching session hooks. Version-specific adapters are selected for the default installed executable, preserving one OpenCode identity while accommodating the two incompatible plugin APIs. #1076, #1138
6. Get through first-run setup with fewer choices. Tab layout, Markdown formatting, and token-usage preferences remain in ordinary Settings rather than the initial wizard. The sidebar is on by default, a one-time introduction explains the available tab layouts, and later layout choices are preserved. #1143, #1191, #1195, #1204

Agent Pane experience

1. Undo and redo draft edits with Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y. Contiguous typing is grouped, while paste, cut, replacement, and deletion remain atomic; undo also restores selections, Unicode text, and image attachments. Click draft text to reposition the caret, including in wrapped or scrolled input. #923, #968
2. Paste screenshots through normal Paste. Configured Ctrl+V and right-click Paste can attach clipboard images, with text fallback and the existing Alt+V path retained. Ordinary terminal paste behavior is unchanged. #1103
3. Read completed replies and saved history as Markdown. Streaming output stays raw until the reply stops, then gains formatted structure while retaining code fences and language labels. Markdown is on by default and can be changed in Settings without restarting the conversation; code syntax highlighting is not included. #1146
4. Queue follow-up messages without interrupting the current turn. A compact pending count tracks requests in the current tab, and Autofix retains the source context captured when its request is admitted. Queues are in memory only; stopping or cancelling pauses pending explicit requests, and there is not yet a UI to recover or discard those stopped requests. #897

Performance

1. Reduced sidebar flicker and unnecessary refresh work. Unchanged icons, pane rows, and backgrounds are reused, and individual tab updates avoid rebuilding every tab's presentation. #1017
2. Shared session-history refreshes across views. Centralized refresh and coalesced requests reduce duplicate discovery work; isolated history queries recover from stuck providers without restarting chat, Autofix, or session restoration. #1057, #1114
3. Skipped Git work for metadata you have not selected. Hidden Git fields do not trigger unnecessary queries, and missing Git or failed repository queries do not remove unrelated directory and agent context. #1067
4. Removed a shell launch from each Copilot lifecycle callback. Hooks invoke the bridge executable directly rather than starting PowerShell or Bash first, reducing per-event overhead. #1158
5. Kept session ages current without extra server queries. A local clock updates relative times while the expanded sidebar is visible, leaving unchanged rows and their scroll position intact. #1104

Bug Fixes

Sessions and agent lifecycle

1. Fixed recent-session loading, partial failures, and stuck history requests. Startup no longer leaves history indefinitely loading, one healthy provider can supply results even if others fail, and bounded recovery retains chat and cached history. #1016, #1019, #1114, #1141, #1174
2. Fixed misleading status during resume and layout restoration. Known session identity appears promptly, restored native sessions register without waiting for unrelated agent startup, and internal Historical or Ended states no longer flash as current pane activity. #1116, #1193, #1216
3. Fixed live session status drifting from the pane you are using. Status follows the latest reported agent in a pane, focusing the auxiliary assistant does not overwrite the source terminal's activity, and eligible sidebar-resumed native sessions receive watcher updates when hooks are unavailable. #1093, #1148, #1151
4. Fixed incorrect Waiting for input transitions. OpenCode questions remain waiting, Copilot background shell completions do not masquerade as input requests, and unrelated tool completions do not immediately clear a new Copilot attention state. #1063, #1149, #1157, #1188
5. Fixed OpenCode titles and Antigravity hook compatibility. OpenCode rename events update the recorded session title, while Antigravity hooks return the expected responses without breaking normal tool calls or bypassing provider permissions. #1124, #1134
6. Fixed cross-instance session reopening and elevated agent metadata. Closing an administrator Terminal no longer leaves a normal instance using its stale session-discovery address, and elevated Agent Panes receive their provider identity and status. Elevated saved layouts now omit automatic assistant and agent-resume additions while retaining ordinary shell layout persistence. #1091, #1200, #1201
7. Stopped late lifecycle hooks from relaunching a closed Terminal. Final agent notifications no longer activate a replacement windowless process after you exit. #1006
8. Fixed duplicate restores after a slow session activation. Retrying a timed-out sidebar activation checks the original operation's outcome instead of launching the same conversation again. #1029
9. Restored the session-management button in horizontal layouts. The bottom-right entry point returns when you switch away from the sidebar, without requiring a restart. #1036

sidebar, panes, and shell integration

1. Fixed jumps and stale selection while navigating the sidebar. Session-status updates preserve your reading position, clicking a pane in another tab focuses that pane directly, and background groups no longer retain the selected-pane highlight. #1074, #1120, #1121
2. Fixed repeated tab moves and filtered navigation. Moving tabs repeatedly no longer triggers the reported XAML failure, and whole-tab moves and numbered shortcuts retain consistent ownership and ordering while filtering or searching. #1047, #1119
3. Fixed shortcut routing after blank sidebar clicks. Page-routed shortcuts such as opening a new tab keep working after focus lands in otherwise empty sidebar space. #1160
4. Fixed split-pane behavior and working-directory inheritance. Normal splitting no longer changes into delegation because of an agent-focused view, and shell-to-agent or agent-to-shell splits use the intended source directory unless you explicitly supply another. #1099, #1159
5. Fixed missing or incorrect Git and directory metadata. PowerShell integration loads after prompt customizations such as Oh My Posh, Git for Windows 2.55+ no longer fails on the previous configuration-path handling, and agent metadata follows the agent's directory rather than an unrelated shell directory. #1032, #1067, #1144
6. Fixed agent discovery and stray provider icons. Windows app execution aliases no longer abort discovery of installed agents, and reusable split or new tab actions do not leak a previous Copilot identity into an ordinary PowerShell pane. #1190, #1210
7. Fixed WTA queries targeting the wrong window. Default discovery accepts native numeric window IDs, and window-scoped pane queries no longer include panes from another window. #1152

Appearance, localization, and reliability

1. Improved Arabic and Hebrew experiences. Window chrome, sidebar placement, Settings, and native Agent Pane controls follow right-to-left UI direction; Settings gains Arabic and Hebrew translations, and standard agent cost values use locale-aware currency formatting. Terminal text rendering itself is unchanged. #1061, #1094, #1100, #1105
2. Fixed sidebar styling and readability issues. Unicode metadata, multiline history titles, pane icons, live tab colors, drag regions, and close-button spacing now behave more consistently across layouts and themes. #1014, #1027, #1028, #1039, #1040, #1060, #1169
3. Fixed a startup crash with scrollbar marks and a hidden scrollbar. A scrollbar bitmap error is logged instead of terminating the application during initialization. #984
4. Separated Store and Dev protocol components. Updated builds load their own package's proxy rather than locking another installation's copy, avoiding the reported cross-package deployment conflict. #1075
5. Made diagnostic logs easier to retain and collect. WTA streams rotate daily with limited dated-file retention, and Git metadata diagnostics are capped and written off the interactive path. #949, #1194

💜 Community

Thank you to the community contributors who helped shape this release:

1. @code-shiromi (Manose K. Y. Carver / Shiromi) — contributed the initial OpenCode V2 hook support so newer OpenCode installations can participate in session tracking. #1076

What's coming up?

We'll continue refining the everyday experience of running agents across multiple tabs, panes, and windows, with an emphasis on clarity, responsiveness, and reliable session workflows.

We'll keep iterating on bugs and feature requests while Intelligent Terminal is in this experimental stage. Please file issues and feature requests to help us make the product better!