terminal-browser is a specialized web browser application engineered to operate entirely within a terminal environment. Designed for developers and power users who prefer to maintain their workflow within the terminal, it bridges the gap between web exploration and command-line operations. Created by Zenbu Labs, this tool allows users to navigate, interact with, and monitor websites without needing a separate graphical browser application window. It supports seamless integration with various terminal configurations, enabling a unified interface for coding, debugging, and browsing tasks. The software is compatible with both macOS and Linux systems, ensuring broad accessibility for professional development environments.

The functionality of terminal-browser centers on rendering web content directly inside a terminal tab or pane. It exposes a powerful CLI that allows users to launch browsers, open specific URLs, and manage split-pane views efficiently. Furthermore, it serves as an agent-compatible browser, enabling automated agents or developers to programmatically control the browser state, perform tests, and visualize content directly alongside other terminal-based processes. This architecture makes it particularly effective for monitoring local development servers or inspecting remote web services over SSH.

Some of the key features are:

• CLI Integration: Full command-line interface support for opening, splitting, and managing browser sessions without context switching.
• Agent Compatibility: Designed to work with agent-browser systems, allowing automated scripts to perform actions and visualize results.
• SSH Support: Ability to view and interact with websites running on remote servers directly over SSH connections, eliminating the need for port forwarding.
• Split Pane Support: Seamless integration with terminal tiling managers to view web content side-by-side with code or logs.
• Terminal Agnostic: Compatible with a wide variety of terminal emulators including Ghostty, Kitty, tmux, and others using the libghostty ecosystem.
• Resource Efficiency: Optimized for terminal performance, ensuring that web content is presented in a manner conducive to command-line workflows.

Operating terminal-browser involves executing commands within your terminal emulator. Users can launch the browser by running the standard executable, or provide specific URLs to navigate directly to a site. The interface supports flags to dictate layout, such as split-pane configurations, and provides commands to list currently active browser instances or interface with existing agent-based workflows. Because it runs directly in the terminal, it maintains the same interaction model as standard CLI applications, making it easy to incorporate into existing shell scripts and development pipelines.

Some common use cases include:

• Local Web Development: Testing and viewing local development servers (e.g., localhost:3000) directly in the same pane where the development server is running.
• Remote Server Administration: Monitoring web-based dashboards or status pages on production or staging servers over SSH without setting up complicated proxy tunnels.
• Agent-Based Automation: Allowing AI coding agents to view the rendered output of local web apps or plan files, facilitating faster feedback loops for web development.
• Terminal-Native Workflow: Eliminating the need to switch between the IDE or terminal and a separate web browser application during a standard coding session.