Terminals · Escouade documentation

Escouade has real built-in terminals, one per shell you open, listed by project in the sidebar. This page explains how to open them, which shells are offered, how to copy, paste and search, and which shortcuts stay with the shell.

Opening a terminal

A terminal is a real shell, in a pseudo-terminal (ConPTY on Windows, pty on macOS and Linux) displayed by xterm.js. Its history, its prompt and its completion are therefore the shell’s own: the Tab key completes as in any terminal. http:// and https:// addresses that appear in the output open in your browser with a plain click, no key to hold. The terminal keeps 10,000 lines of history.

To open…	Do this
A terminal in the project folder	`Ctrl+T` (`⌘T` on macOS), or the + button of the sidebar’s “Terminals” section. The shortcut uses the first shell in the list; the + button offers each shell.
A terminal in an agent’s worktree	Right-click the agent’s card, then “Open a terminal”. Without a worktree, the terminal opens in the project folder. See worktrees.
A terminal in a folder of the editor	Right-click a folder in the editor’s file tree, then “Open a terminal here”. On the free space, it is the source’s root (the agent’s worktree or the project).

A terminal is named after its shell and a number (pwsh-1), or after its shell and the agent or folder it comes from (pwsh · refacto-auth, pwsh · src). It is added to the project’s “Terminals” section, along with the number of open terminals: clicking its row displays it, the row’s × closes it. When the shell has stopped, the row carries “exited”.

Without a shell found, a message says so: “No shell found (PowerShell 7, Git Bash, WSL). Check the settings.”

The available shells

Escouade detects the shells installed on your machine.

System	Shells offered
Windows	“PowerShell” (PowerShell 7, looked for in the `PATH` then in `Program Files`); “Windows PowerShell” instead when PowerShell 7 is missing; “Git Bash”, the one from Git for Windows; “WSL” (“WSL (Ubuntu)” when a distribution is set).
macOS and Linux	Your login shell (`$SHELL`) first, then zsh, bash and fish when they are installed. `sh` is the last resort when none of the others is found.

The first one in the list is what Ctrl+T opens. On macOS and Linux, shells start as login shells (-l), as in an ordinary terminal. WSL opens in the project folder (or the agent’s) and takes the default distribution, or the one in Settings › Terminals.

The paths of PowerShell 7 and Git Bash, the WSL distribution and, on macOS, the path of bash are set in Settings › Terminals, which also shows the detected shells (on Linux, only the “Git Bash” field counts, for bash): see the terminals settings.

In the terminal

The terminal fills the whole main area. Its header gives its name, its shell and the project folder, and it has three buttons: the magnifier (see below), “Clear”, which empties the screen, and “Close terminal”. Closing the terminal stops the shell. On Windows, it also stops the programs the shell started, except those that opened a window (a browser, an editor), which stay open.

The terminal keeps its contents when you display something else, for example a conversation, and then come back.

When the shell stops (an exit, for example), a bar says “Process exited.” or “Process exited (code 1).”, with “Restart”, which closes this terminal and opens a new one with the same shell, in the project folder, and “Close”.

Copying and pasting

System	Copy	Paste
Windows and Linux	Select with the mouse, then `Ctrl+C` (or `Ctrl+Shift+C`). Without a selection, `Ctrl+C` interrupts the program as usual.	`Ctrl+V`
macOS	`⌘C` on the selection	`⌘V`

On macOS, the Ctrl keys all go to the shell (except Ctrl+Tab).

Escouade’s shortcuts

A terminal keeps almost all keys for the shell. The behavior depends on the system.

On Windows and Linux, these shortcuts go through to Escouade: Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab (next and previous agent), Ctrl+Shift+A (the overview), Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9 (go to project n), Ctrl+, (the settings) and Ctrl+J (the next waiting agent). Ctrl+Shift+B (the files panel) and Ctrl+Shift+L (the layout) work too: the terminal sends nothing to the shell for Ctrl+Shift plus a letter. The other Ctrl plus a letter keys, including Ctrl+K, Ctrl+P, Ctrl+N and Ctrl+T, goes to the shell: a Ctrl+T typed in a terminal therefore doesn’t open a new terminal.
On macOS, all of Escouade’s ⌘ shortcuts work in a terminal, and ⌘C, ⌘V and ⌘A (select all) are the terminal’s own. Ctrl+Tab goes to the next agent.

Searching, clearing, closing

The header’s magnifier, or Ctrl+Shift+F (⇧⌘F on macOS) when the terminal has the focus, opens a “Search…” field: Enter goes to the next match, Shift+Enter to the previous one and Esc closes the field and gives the focus back to the terminal.
“Clear” empties the terminal’s screen.
“Close terminal” closes it.

The proxy

In Settings › Network, the “Also apply the proxy to the built-in terminals” switch (off by default) gives terminals the HTTPS_PROXY, HTTP_PROXY variables (and their lowercase forms) with the proxy’s address, and NO_PROXY with the exclusions. It applies to terminals opened after the change, and also to launch commands and to worktrees’ setup and teardown commands. See the network settings.

Escouade’s other terminals

Escouade uses the same terminal elsewhere: each launch command runs in its own, read-only (see running the project), and an agent’s Claude Code view is Claude Code itself in a terminal (see the Claude Code view), and the window that signs in a Claude account shows the account’s claude in a terminal (see Claude accounts).